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I) 


Tilt  Times  Histtry  of  the  War,  May,  1915. 


Th«  London  Q«ocrapK<c«i  Instilur*. 


The  Times  Hi. 


T-l^^'^-^fe^ 


tmti 


HISTORY 


OF 


THE  WAR 


VOL.  III. 


-ri      y^ 


PRINTING    HOUSE    SQUARE. 


PRINTED  AND  PUBLISHED  BY  "THE  TIMES," 
PRINTING  HOUSE  SQUARE,  LONDON. 


1915- 


D 
SOI 

T5 
v,3 


1 


CONTENTS  OF  VOL.  III. 


CHAPTER   XLVIII. 
The  Advance  on  Ypres 


PAGE 


CHAPTER   XLVII. 
Fbom  the  Fall  of  Antwerp  to  the  Battle  op  the  Yser        1 


15 


CHAPTER   XLIX. 
The  Intervention  of  Turkey...         ...         ...         ...       41 

CHAPTER  L. 
The  Turkish  Army         ...         ...         ...       55 

CHAPTER   LI. 
The  Outbreak  of  War  and  the  Campaign  in  the  Caucasus  ...         ...         ...       C7 

CHAPTER    Lll. 
The  Invasion  of  Chaldea         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...       SI 

CHAPTER    LJII. 
The  Second  Three  ^Ionths  of  Naval  War  ...         ...         ...         ...         ...     121 

CHAPTER    Ll\'. 
The  German  Counter-Offensive  and  the  Belgian  Battle  of  the  Yser         ...     161 

CHAPTER    L\'. 
Russia's  Problem...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...     201 

CHAPTER   L\'I. 
The  First  Invasion  of  East  Prussia  ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...     223 

CHAPTER   LVII. 
The  Russian  Conquest  of  IUlria    ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...     241 

CHAPTER    lATII. 
The  Problem  of  Egypt:  A  New  Regime     ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...     281 

CHAPTER   LIX. 
The  German  Failure  in  Poland        ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         •■•         ...     321 

CHAPTER   1^. 
Second  and  Third  Austrian  Invasions  of  Serbia  :    Fall  and  Pecapture  of 

Belgrade         ...  ...         ...         •••         •■•         •••         ■••         •••         •••         •••     -^^'l 

CHAPTER    LXI.^ 
The  Autumn  and  Winter  Campaign  in  Eastern  Fr.\nce  401 

CHAPTER    J.Xll. 
The  Battle  of  Ypres  (First  I'hase)  -l-'l 

CHAPTER   J.XIll. 
The  Franco-Belgian  Battle  of  the  Yser  -^^'^ 

CHAPTER   LXIV. 
The  South  African  Rebellion  '^^ 


CHAPTER    XLVII. 

FROM  THE  FALL  OF  ANTWERP 
TO  THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  YSER. 


The  SiTiTATiON  October  9 — The  Retreat  of  the  Belgians  from  Antwerp — The  Advance  of 
THE  English — The  Belgian  Retreat  to  Ostend  and  the  French  Frontier — German 
Occupation  of  Ghent,  Bruges,  Ostend— The  Flight  to  England  and  France — German 
Mistakes — Their  Possible  Explanation — Want  of  Accurate  Information — Failure  oh 
THE  German  Cavalry — Their  Aeroplane  Service — The   German  Gains. 


BY  October  9,  the  date  of  tlie  fall  of 
Antwerp  and  the  day  before  the 
bombardment  of  Lille,  the  anny  of 
General  de  Castelnau,  with  General 
Brugere's  Territorial  Divisions,  stretched  across 
the  Plain  of  the  Somme  from  the  region  of 
Compiegne  to  the  heights  north  of  that  river. 
Castelnau's  left  wing  rested  on  the  Ancre  west 
of  Bapaume.  Upon  the  hills  northward 
between  the  Ancre  and  the  Plain  of  the  Scheldt, 
as  far  as  the  region  of  Bethune,  were  disposed 
the  troops  forming  the  army  of  General  de 
Maud'huy,  a  detachment  of  wliich  in  the  centre 
held  Arras  at  the  edge  of  the  plain.  Since 
October  6  that  city  had  been  bombarded  by  the 
enemy.  Facing  Maud'hiiy's  Army  (the  10th) 
extended  a  lino  of  Germans  forming  a  continu- 
ous crescent  from  the  region  of  Bapaume  to 
La  Bassee.  The  left  wing  of  this  body  held 
high  groimd  between  the  Plains  of  the  Somme 
and  the  Scheldt.  The  centre  was  in  the  Plain 
of  the  Scheldt  west  of  Douai  ;  the  right  wing 
passed  east  of  Lens  through  Loison  to  La  Bassee 
on  the  Canal  St.  Omer-Aire-La  Bassee-Lille. 
This  canal  enters  the  canalised  river  Aa  a  little 
to  the  south  of  St.  Omer.  At  Wat  ten,  five  miles 
Vol.    ill.— Part  27. 


to  the  north  of  St.  Omer,  it  meets  a  canal  which 
runs  eastward — througli  Furnes — to  Nieuport 
and  thence  into  the  Canal  de  Ghent  between 
Ostend  and  Bruges. 

From  Watten  the  Aa  flows  past  Gravelines 
to  the  North  Sea.  It  meets  the  Canal  de 
Calais  going  west,  and  next,  from  the  east, 
another  canal,  which  enters  the  sea  at  Dunkirk, 

The  Canal  de  Calais,  the  canalised  Aa.  and 
the  portion  of  the  Canal  St.  Oraer-Airc-Betluino- 
La  Bassee-Lille  which  lies  between  St.  Omer  and 
Bethune  skirt  the  liilly  district  extending  from 
the  south  of  Calais  to  the  south  of  Arras. 
Together  these  waterways  formed  a  deep  ditch 
in  front  of  the  low  ramjiart  of  hills  which  from 
Calais  to  Peronno  barred  the  advance  of  the 
Germans  to  the  English  Channel.  The  army  of 
General  d'Urbal,  to  whose  support  the  Cavalry 
Corps,  the  TIL  and  the  II.  Corps  of  the  British 
Expeditionary  Force*  were  being  rai)idly 
transported,  held  both  banks  of  the  ditch  and 
also  the  line  of  the  canal  which  from  Wattcii 
runs   south    of    Dunkirk    through    Furnes   and 


*  To  fncilitato  refeionce  tlio  British  Army  Corps  are 
iiuinberod  tlius  :  I.,  II..  HI-,  IV.,  &e.  ;  tlio  divisions  niid 
brigades    1st,  2nd,  3rd,  iXi-. 


THE    TIMES    HlhTORY    01     THE     WAR. 


MAJ.-GEN.    THE    HON.   JULIAN    BYNG. 

Nieuport  to  the  Canal  de  Ghent.  But  d'Urbal's 
Army,  on  October  9,  was  only  in  process  of 
formation. 

Further  to  the  east  was  Lieut. -General  Sir 
Henry  Rawlinson  \\ith  the  7th  Infantry  Divi- 
sion and  3rd  Cavalry  Division.  They  had 
disembarked  between  October  6  and  8  at  Ostend 
and  Zeebrugge.  On  the  10th  the  3rd  Cavalry 
Division  under  Major-General  the  Hon.  JuUan 
Byng  was  south  of  Bruges,  round  Thourout  and 
Ruddervoorde.  The  task  of  Sir  Henry  Rawlin- 
son was  to  prevent  the  Germans,  who  had  crossed 
the  Lys  west  of  Ghent,  seizing  Bruges  and  Ostend 
and  cutting  the  retreat  of  the  Belgian  Ai'my 
and  its  British  auxiliaries  retiring  from  Antwerp 
on  Bruges,  Ostend  and  Nieuport. 

One  by  one  the  national  defences  of  Belgium 
against  an  invasion  from  the  east  had  fallen 
into  the  possession  of  the  Germans.  First  had 
been  lost  the  Meuse  and  the  Ardennes,  then  the 
Dyle  and  the  Senne,  next  the  Dendre  and  the 
Scheldt,  and  now  the  Lys.  In  the  oblong  plain, 
roughly  60  miles  by  30  miles,  wliich  is  bounded 
by  the  Lys  from  Aire  to  Ghent,  by  the  canal  from 
Ghent  to  Zeebrugge,  by  the  sea  from  Zeebrugge 
to  Calais,  and  by  the  canal  and  the  canalised 
Aa  from  Calais  to  Aire,  the  Germans  had 
occupied  Ypres,  the  long,  narrow  ridge  of  hills 
to  the   south-west   of   it,   and  Baillevil.     Their 


outposts  were  close  to  Hazebrouck  and  Cassel, 
and  they  were  advancing  up  both  banks  of  the 
Lys  from  Armentieres  towards  Aire  ;  they  held 
the  bridges  and  fords  of  the  river  between 
Courtrai  and  .Merviile  and  even  fiu"thor 
west. 

South  of  the  Lys  and  between  it  and  the 
Scheldt  the  Germans  were  surrounding  and 
about  to  bombard  Lille,  sternly  defended  by 
French  Territorials. 

This  and  the  next  chapter  deal  chiefly  with 
the  important  movements  between  October  9 
and  20.  During  this  period  the  Germans  pur- 
sued the  Belgian  Army  through  Ghent,  Bruges 
and  Ostend  to  the  Une  of  the  Yser  from  Nieuport 
to  Dixmude,  and  they  succeeded  in  capturing 
Lille.  But,  at  the  same  time.  General  d'Urbal's 
Army  (the  8th),  wliich  was  daily  growing  in 
mmibers,  and  the  British  Cavalry  Corps  and 
the  III.  Corps,  with  the  assistance  of  the  I\'. 
Corps — i.e.,  the  forces  vmder  Sir  Henry  Rawlin- 
son— drove  the  Germans  east  of  Y^pres. 

The  oblong  Aire-Ghent-Zeebrugge-Calais  is 
divided  into  two  more  or  less  equal  sections  by 
the  canal  from  Comines  on  the  Lys  to  Ypres, 
by  the  canal  from  Ypres  to  the  Yser,  and  by  the 
canalised  Y'ser  through  Dixmude  to  its  mouth 
at  Nieuport  Bains.  The  Germans  were  ex- 
pelled from  the  western  section  of  this  oblong 
and  from  a  part  of  the  eastern  section.  South 
of  the  oblong,  in  the  "  Black  Coimtry "  of 
France,  Sir  Horace  Smith-Dorrien,  with  the 
II.  Corps,  and  General  Conneau's  Cavalry 
Corps  pushed  the  Germans  some  distance  back 
towards  Lille  between  the  Lys  and  the  Aire- 
Bethiine-La  Bassee-Lille  Canal,  and  the  armies 
of  Maud'huy  and  Castelnau  continued  their 
struggle  with  the  Germans  from  Bethune  to 
Compiegne. 

Meanwhile  Hindenburg  in  the  Easterii  Theatre 
of  War,  after  his  defeat  on  the  Niemen  at  the 
battle  of  Augustovo  (September  25  to  Octo- 
ber 3),  had  advanced  on  Warsaw,  and  in  South 
Africa,  on  Octol:)er  13,  Maritz  raised  the  stan- 
dard of  revolt. 

Of  the  above  events  in  the  Western  Theatre 
of  War,  the  first  to  be  described  will  be  the 
retirement  of  the  Belgian  Army  from  Antwerp 
to  Nieuport  and  the  hue  of  the  Yser. 

Antwerp,  "  the  pistol  aimed  at  the  heart  of 
England,"  as  Napoleon  had  called  it,  was  in 
the  grasp  of  the  mailed  fist,  but  so  long  as  the 
Kaiser  respected  the  neutrality  of  Holland  he 
could  not  load  and  fire  the  weapon  he  had 
filched. 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


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GENERAL    MAP    TO    ILLUSTRATE    THE    OPERATIONS 
FROM    OCTOBER    9    TO    OCTOBER    20. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


LILLE. 


Nevertheless,  the  capture  of  Antwerp — held 
by  tlie  ignorant  to  bo  iin]3regnable — was  not 
without  influence,  especiallj-  in  Germany, 
where  even  the  bombardment  of  an  open  sea- 
side town  in  England  is  regarded  as  a  notable 
military  operation.  Antwerp  had  long  been 
coveted  by  German  captains  of  indvistry,  like 
Herr  Ballin  :  German  capital  had  been  largely 
invested  there  and,  before  the  Great  War,  it 
w  as  fast  assuming  the  appearance  of  a  German 
port.  Whether  it  was  the  fall  of  Antwerp  that 
decided  Beyers  and  Do  Wet  to  f^tart  their 
abortive  rebellion  in  South  Africa  may  be  a 
moot  point  ;  but  it  is  certain  that  this  success 
put  fresh  life  into  the  German  forces  in  Europe. 

It  was  an  excellent  augurj'^  for  the  impending 
marches  on  Warsaw  and  Calais.  Also,  it  again 
enabled  the  German  commanders  on  the  Oise 
and  Aisne  to  look  forward  to  the  resumption 
of  the  march  on  Paris. 

So  long  as  Antwerp  was  in  Belgian  hands,  the 
German  commixnications  back  through  Liege 
were  perpetually  menaced.  For  the  two  towns 
were  only  sixty  miles  apart — i.e.,  roughly  fom- 
days'  march — so  that  if  the  Allied  force  at  the 
former  place  was  materially  strengthened  it 
would  need  no  great  effort  to  thrust  Beseler 
back  on  Liege  or  be\'ond.  Then  not  only 
would  the  whole  of  the  German  communications 
through  Liege  have  been  cut,  Init  tliose  south 


of  Liege  through  the  Ardeniies  would  have  been 
rendered  precarious. 

While  Ostend  and  Zeebrugge  were  Belgian 
ports,  and  the  line  of  the  canal  from  Ostend 
through  Bruges  to  Ghent  and  the  line  of  the 
Scheldt  from  Ghent  to  Antwerp  were  held  l>y 
the  Allies,  the  Belgian  Army  in  Antwerp  miglit 
be  rapidly  reinforced  either  from  Great  Britai-a 
or  from  France  by  the  railways  and  roads  along 
the  French  coast  to  Dunkirk.  From  Dimkirlc 
a  single-line  railroad  ran  through  Furnes  and 
Dixmude  to  Thom*out  :  through  Thourout 
passed  the  double-line  railroad*  from  Courtrai 
to  Ostend  and  the  single-line  railway  from 
Ypres  to  Bruges,  Steam  tramwaj^s  joined 
Furnes  and  Dixmude  to  Ostend,  and,  until 
the  Germans  occupied  Hazebrouck  and  Ypres, 
troops  could  be  transported  from  St.  Omer, 
wdthout  going  north  to  Dunkirk,  through 
Ypres  and  Thourout  to  Bruges.  There  were 
also,  of  course,  plenty  of  highways  on  \^'hich 
men  and  material  could  be  carried  by  auto- 
omnibvis,  that  new  and  useful  military  vehicle, 
from  France  to  Ostend  or  Bruges. 

The  German  Staff  had,  therefore,  to  face 
the  possibility,  or  rather  probability,  of 
the  areas  between  the  Dutch  frontier  and 
the  Canal  de  Ghent  and  the  Scheldt,  between 

*  The  line  between  Courtrai  and  Thourout  was  single 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAB. 


the  Lys  and  the  North  Sea,  being  suddenly 
filled  with  armies  from  England  or  France. 
From  Antwerp  those  armies  could  be  directed 
on  Liege,  Brussels,  Namur.  Lastly,  as  a 
springing- off  point  for  air-raids  on  Aix-la- 
Chapelle,  Cologne,  Diisseldorf,  Essen  and  the 
cities  of  Westphalia  the  country  round  Antwerp 
woxild  be  invaluable  to  the  Allies. 

By  the  capture  of  Antwerp  and  by  holding 
Brussels  and  Liege  the  Germans  opposed  a 
strong  bai'rier  across  the  road  to  the  Rhine. 

But,  though  the  Germans  had  taken  Antwerp, 
crossed  the  Scheldt  between  Ghent  and  Ant- 
werp, and  forced  a  portion  of  the  Belgian  and 
British  troops  on  to  Dutch  soil,  the  remainder 
of    the    Allied    forces    had    reached    the   line 
Ghent-Selzaete   in   good   order.      There  was   a 
chance    that    the    German    forces    which    had 
occupied  Ypres  on  October  3  and  had  spread 
out    towards    Hazebrouck    might    move    froixi 
Ypres  to  Bruges  and  Ostend  and  cut  off  the 
retreating  Belgians  and  British  at  those  points. 
To  provide  for  this  contingency.  Lord  Kitchener, 
as  mentioned,  had  dispatched  Sir  Henry  Rawlin- 
son  with  the  7th  Infantry  Division  and  the  3rd 
Cavalry     Division     to     Ostend     and     Bruges. 
Between     Ypres     and    the     canal     connecting 
Ostend   with   Bruges   was   no   serious   natural 
obstacle  to  delay  the  German  movements,  and 
oops  alone  could  stop  a  German  advance  in 
force.      On   the   9th — the   day  after   Sir   John 
French's     interview     with     General     Foch     at 
DouUens — the  Cavalry  Division,  under  Mcxjor- 
General  the  Hon.  Julian  Byng,  concentrated  at 
Bruges,  where  it  was  joined  by  a  detaclunent  of 
armoured  motor-cars.    The  next  day,  the  10th, 
it    moved    towards    Ypres,    the    6th    Cavalry 
Brigade    to   Thourout,   and    the    7th   Cavalry 
Brigade  to  Ruddervoorde.     The  day  after.  t!.o 
armoured     motor-cars     "  di-ew     first     blood," 
capturing    two    officers    and    five    men    in    tlic 
direction  of  Ypres.     On  the  12th  the    Division 
held   a   line   stretching   through   Roulers   from 
Oostnieuwkerke  on  the  west  to  Iseghem  on  the 
east.     From  Roulers  a  canal  runs  to  the  Lys. 
During  the  next  day  the  Cavalry  reconnoitred 
towards    Ypres    and     Menin,    wliilo    the    7th 
Infantry  Division  reached  Roulers.     At  9  a.m. 
on   the    l-lth    Byng's   Cavalry   entered    Ypres, 
which   had  already  been  occupied  by  Franco- 
British  troops  on  the  13th  ;   Byng  was  followed 
by  the  Infantry  of  the  7th  Division. 

Three  days  before  (October  11),  as  will  bo 
related  elsewhere,  the  II.  Corps  (Sir  Horace 
Smith-Dorrien's)had  coiuinenced  its  luoi'chsouth 


of  the  Lys  from  the  Aire-Bethune  Canal  to  turn 
the  position  of  the  Germans  at  La  Bassee.  The 
French  Cavalry  Corps  of  General  Cormeau  was 
to  his  left ;  on  Conneau's  left — round  Haze- 
brouck— was  the  III.  Corps  (General  Pulteneys), 
and  beyond  them,  to  the  north,  the  Cavalry 
Corps  (General  Allenby's).  The  Cavah-y  Corjjs 
had  captured  the  western  end  of  the  ridge  to 
the  south-west  of  Ypres.  On  Ypres  itself  the 
87th  and  89th  French  Territorial  Divisions, 
coirunanded  by  General  Bidon,  had  been  directed 
by  General  d'Urbal.* 

Thus  any  German  intention  of  marching  from 
Ypres  on  Bruges  had  been  frustrated  by  the 
advance  of  Rawlinson  from  Bruges  on  Ypres, 
combined  as  it  was  with  the  movement  eastward 
of  d'Urbal's  and  Sir  John  French's  Armies  from 
the  line  Dunkirk-Bethune.  In  the  next  chapter 
that  movement  \\  ill  be  narrated  in  detail. 

In  the  meantime  the  Belgian  and  British  troops 
who  evacuated  Antwerp  had  halted  round 
Ghent.  They  were  threatened  by  the  German 
forces  at  Lokeren,  north  of  the  Scheldt,  and  at 

*  "  When  I  arrived  in  the  Nord  I  found  in  all  two 
divisions  of  Territorials  and  some  Cavalry." — General 
d'Urbal. 


THE    BELGIAN    WAR    OlFIGK. 
Villa  Louis  XIV.  at  St.  Adnsse,  near  Ilnvre. 

27—2 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAIL 


Alost,  on  the  Dendre.which  flows  into  the  Scheldt 
east  of  Ghent  from  the  south.  A  Taube  had  flown 
over  Ghent  and  dropped — for  a  wonder — not  a 
bomb  but  a  proclamation.  On  the  morning  of 
the  9th  Uhlans  were  repulsed  by  some  Belgian 
cyclists  at  Quatrecht,  but,  later  in  the  day, 
German  field  artillery  opened  on  what  remained 
of  the  village  of  Melle,  which  three  weeks  before 
had  been  visited  by  the  Kaiser's  professional 
mcendiaries.  Quatrecht  and  Melle  were  south 
of  the  Scheldt  and  east  of  the  Lys. 

Bj'  5  p.m.  the  Belgian  artillery  was  over- 
powered and  withdrawn,  and  a  column  of 
German  infantry  pushed  forward.  Passing  under 
a  long  railway  bridge  they  were  mown  down  by 
some  Belgians  in  ambush. 

Nor  was  that  the  end  of  the  Belgian  successes. 
Batteries  of  quick-firing  guns  had  been  quietly 
brought  up  into  positions  from  wliich  they  could 
enfilade  the  German  guns.  Suddenly  they 
opened  fire  and  the  hostile  batteries  were  put 
out  of  action.  More  guns  were  moved  forward 
by  the  enemy,  and  at  midnight  the  Germans 
renewed  the  battle.  Fmally,  in  the  early  hours 
of  the  morning  of  October  10  the  Belgians 
marched  tlu'ough  Melle,  fired  on  the  Landsturm 
troops  entrenched  in  the  fields  to  the  east  of  the 
village,  and  charged  them  with  the  bayonet. 
The  Germans  fled,  losing  heavily  in  dead, 
wounded  and  prisoners. 


The  next  day  (Sunday)  the  people  of  Ghent 
s[)ent  in  peace  and  at  liberty.  The  streets  were 
filled  with  refugees.  As  Ghent  and  Bruges  were 
to  Belgium  what  Verona  and  Venice  were  to 
Italy,  it  had  been  decided  to  give  the  demolishers 
of  Louvain  and  Mahnes  and  the  bombarders  of 
Antwerp,  Reims,  Arras,  Lille  no  excuse  for  the 
exercise  of  theu*  pecuUar  talents  for  destruction. 
Ghent  and  Bruges  were  to  be  left  open  cities  ; 
the  town  m  which  ]\Iaeterlinck  had  been  born 
was  to  be  surrendered  on  the  morrow  to  the 
followers  of  the  Kaiser. 

On  Monday,  October  12,  three  German 
officers  m  a  motor-car  drove  up  to  the  Hotel 
de  Ville,  and  arranged  with  the  Burgomaster 
for  the  "  peaceful  occupation."  After  the 
motor-car  came  some  cyclist  soldiers,  next 
troops  of  cavalry.  An  hour  later  the  German 
flag  was  hoisted  over  the  Hotel  de  Ville. 

From  Ghent  one  body  of  Germans  proceeded 
to  Bruges.  Half  way  between  the  two  cities — at 
Ursel,  to  the  north  of  the  Canal  de  Ghent — 
there  was  a  brief  engagement.  Another  force 
marched  by  Thielt  towards  Thourout  and 
Roulers. 

At  2  p.m.  on  October  14,  forty  cyclist 
soldiers  rode  into  Bruges,  and  some  of  them  tore 
down  the  British  and  French  flags  from  the 
Hotel  de  Ville.  Out  of  derision  they  left  the 
Belgian   flag   flying.     The    "All-highest"    had 


A    BELGIAN    FIRING    LINE. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


FRENCH    CITIZENS    TAKEN    PRISONERS    BY    THE    BAVARIANS. 


not  proclaimed  himself  King  of  Belgium  !  The 
day  before,  at  8.30  a.m.,  the  Belgian  Govern- 
ment, the  personnel  and  families  of  the  Ministers, 
had  sailed  for  Havre  ;  the  King  and  the  Minister 
of  War  remained  behind.  To  receive  the 
exiled  Goverimient  the  French  Minister  of 
Marine  had  left  Bordeaux  for  Havre.  The 
official  announcement  was  made  in  the  following 
terms  : 

The  Belgian  Government,  finding  no  longer  in  Belgium 
the  necessary  freedom  for  the  full  exercise  of  its  authority, 
asked  for  the  hospitality  of  France,  and  indicated  a  wish 
to  transfer  its  residence  to  Havre.  The  Government  of 
the  Republic  replied  at  once  that,  even  as  it  made  no 
distinction  in  its  solicitude  for  the  Belgian  and  French 
Armies,  so  it  would  heartily  receive  the  Belgian  Govern- 
ment and  would  assure  it  full  sovereign  rights  and  the 
complete  exercise  of  its  authority  and  governmental 
duties. 

It  had  been  arranged  that  the  Belgian 
Govermnent  should  have  the  same  rights  at 
Havre  as  were  accorded  by  Italy  to  the  Pope 
under  the  Law  of  Guarantees.  The  King  of 
the  Belgians  thanked  M.  Poincar6  : 

"  We  await,"  he  telegraphed,  "  the  hour  of 
mutual  victory  with  unshakable  confidence. 
Fighting  side  by  side  for  a  just  goal,  our  courage 
will  never  fail." 

The  Belgian  Prime  Minister,  M.  de  Broque- 
ville,  at  the  same  time  assured  M.  Viviani 
that   Belgium,    who    sacrificed   everything    for 


the  defence  of  honesty,  honour,  and  liberty, 
regretted  nothing. 

Bruges  seized,  the  Germans  rushed  on  the  sea- 
side resorts  of  Belgium  from  Ostend,  the  Monte 
Carlo  of  the  North  Sea,  to  the  picturesque  httle 
village  of  Knocke,  with  its  golf  greens.  Ostend 
and  Zeebrugge  (connected  with  Bruges  by  a 
ship  caiial)  were  the  termini  of  the  Belgians 
escaping  to  England  ;  those  flying  to  France 
were  pouring  either  along  the  coast  from 
Ostend  through  Nieuport  and  Fumes  to 
Dunkirk,  or  by  the  more  inland  roads. 

Never  before  this  war  had  such  sights  been 
seen.  Ever  since  1870-1  the  French,  who  had 
then  learnt  the  real  nature  of  those  Prussians 
idolLsed  by  Carlyle  and  his  school,  had  been 
expecting  the  Prussians  to  commit  atrocities. 
But  living  Belgians  as  yet  had  had  no  experience 
of  Prussian  Kullur  in  war-time. 

Remembering  this  fact,  picture  the  scene 
at  Ostend.  Of  those  unable  to  bear  arms,  some 
with  stoical  resignation  were  awaiting  an  in- 
vader who  at  any  moment  might  behave  as  he 
had  behaved  at  Louvain,  Malines,  or  Termondo. 
The  remainder,  abandoning  businesses  whicli 
they  had  built  up,  Icavijig  the  posts  which 
asstu-ed  their  livelihoods,  snatched  up  a  few 
clothes  and  portable  objects  of  \altu>. 
escaped    with    their    womenfolk    and    childnn 


8 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


A    SUSPECTED    SPY    STOPPED    BY    GERMANS    OUTSIDE    BRUSSELS. 


from  the  houses  which  had  sheltered  them, 
leaving  their  furniture,  objects  of  art,  trinkets, 
books,  letters,  pictures,  portraits,  photographs, 
which  meant  so  much  to  them,  to  be  stolen, 
destroyed,  or  defiled  by  the  German  house- 
breakers. The  rich,  who  had  no  money 
invested  out  of  reach  of  the  Germans  and  their 
Allies  were,  unless  they  had  had  the  prescience 
to  convert  their  wealth  into  gold  and  silver  or 
jewels,  reduced  to  the  level  of  the  poor. 

On  the  quays  at  Ostend,  and  in  the  Square 
fronting  the  Gare  Maritune,  were  collected  old 
men,  women,  children,  infants  in  arms,  town- 
folk,  farmers,  peasants,  waiting  under  the 
drizzling  rain  to  be  shipped  in  the  chilly  month 
of  October  to  an  island  of  whose  inhabitants 
but  few  spoke  French,  and  hardly  any  Flemish. 

They  embarked  on  trawlers,  fishing  smacks, 
even  row  boats,  as  well  as  on  steamers.  Between 
dawn  and  9  a.m.  of  October  13  a  vast  crowd 
awaited  the  mail  boats.  The  arrival  of  the 
ships  Avas  the  signal  for  a  frantic  rush  to  board 
them.  Hundreds  jmnped  from  the  landing 
stages  on  to  the  decks.  Cliildren  were  separated 
from  their  inotliers  ;  wi\-es  from  their  husbands  ; 
the  old  were  trampled  on.     It   was  like  the 


stampede  which  takes  place  in  a  theatre  on  the 
cry  of  "  fire." 

Overhead  flew  a  German  biplane,  whose 
occupants  coolly  inspected  the  horrible  scene 
below.  After  gratifying  their  curiosity  they 
departed  to  observe  what  was  happening  at 
Zeebrugge. 

When  the  last  boat  put  off  (October  14),  the 
scene  was  indescribable.  Nearly  4,000  parsons, 
mostly  women  and  children,  were  gathered  in 
and  round  the  boat  station.  Many  of  them 
had  tasted  neither  food  nor  drink  for  twentj^- 
foor  hoLU-s.  As  the  boat  pushed  off  there  was 
a  wild  rush,  and  several  persons  were  flung 
forward  into  the  water  between  the  pier  and 
the  ship's  side  and  were  drowned. 

A  Times  correspondent  witnessed  the  heart- 
breaking spectacle  on  October  14  : 

Ostend  had  a  great  alarm  this  morning,  and  the  panic 
at  the  time  I  write  is  much  worse  than  yesterday. 

This  morning  two  mail  boats  had  cleared  loaded  to 
the  gunwales  with  a  varied  human  freight,  when  certai  i 
persons  among  the  crowds  on  the  quays  forced  thoir 
way  through  the  struggling  mass  shouting  out  that  all 
the  remaining  vessels  in  the  port  had  been  requisitioned 
to  carry  oS  the  wounded  soldiers,  hundreds  of  whom 
had  been  hurried  in  from  Knocke,  Blankenberghe.  Coq, 
and  other  coast  villages  between  Ostend  and  the  Dutch 
border,  and  so  save  them  from  falling  into  the  clutchss 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


of  the  Germans.  The  alarmists — they  were  both  men 
and  women — added  that  the  enemy  had  already  occupied 
Bruges,  and  was  marching  on  Ostend  in  force.  Women 
fainted,  children  shrieked,  and  men  ran  hither  and 
thither  as  if  possessed.  Only  when  three  more  steamers 
drew  alongside  and  the  people  were  permitted  to  board 
them  without  any  such  formalities  as  ticket  examina- 
tion and  production  of  passports  did  the  terror  abate. 

To  make  matters  worse,  the  familiar  Taube  made  its 
morninc;  call,  and  dropped  a  bomb.  This  fell  in  the 
Rue  Peter  Bsnoit,  close  to  a  group  of  refut^ees,  who 
scattered  in  all  directions.  LuckUy  no  one  was  injured. 
To-day  practically  nobody  remains  in  the  hotels,  and 
the  shopkeepers  are  putting  up  their  shutters.  Hun- 
dreds of  woimded — those  on  the  way  to  recovery — have 
crossed  to  England  to-day,  but  a  large  number  remain 
with  few  Red  Cross  people  to  care  for  them,  and  to  add 
to  their  misery  and  that  of  the  town  in  general  food  has 
become  very  scarce. 

One  of  the  War  Correspondents  left  for 
England  in  a  paddle-wheel  steam-tug.  Nomially 
it  took  50  ;  that  night  it  had  to  accommodate 
200  or  300  persons.  At  9  p.m.  the  passengers 
went  on  board.  There  was  neither  light  nor 
food  nor  shelter  ;  rain  swept  in  from  the  sea  ; 
a  heavy  mist  penetrated  everywhere.  Not 
till  7  a.m.  was  a  start  made.  Then  the  pilot 
remembered  that  he  had  left  behind  him  his 
wife  and  children.  The  tug  returned  and  was 
made  fast  to  a  large  mud  barge.  At  last,  with 
the  pilot's  wife  and  her  belongings,  which 
included  a  pet  dog  and  a  canary,  they  put  out 
again,  and  it  was  then  discovered  that  the 
compass  was  out  of  order.  Fortunately  the  sea 
was  calm,  and  by  following  another  vessel  the 
tug  reached  Folkestone  in  safety. 

But  all  could  not  obtain  passages  for  England. 
AVlien  day  broke  (October  15)  men  and  women 
sat  shivering  on  the  Digue,  some  reading  the  fol- 
lowing proclamation  : 

Fellow  citizens,  countrymen  !  For  two  months  ai.d 
a  half,  at  an  heroic  price,  the  Belgian  soldiers  have 
defended  inch  by  inch  their  homeland.  The  enemy 
counted  on  the  annihilation  of  our  Army,  but  a  retreat 
cariied  out  in  admirable  order  has,  at  the  same  time, 
wrecked  his  hopes  and  assured  to  us  the  conservation  of 
our  military  forces,  who  will  continue  to  fight  to  the 
bitter  end  for  the  highest  and  most  just  of  causes. 
From  now  onwards  our  Army  in  conjunction  with  the 
Allies  will  operate  on  the  southern  frontier.  Thanks  to 
this  valorous  cooperation  the  triumph  of  right  is  certain. 

To  the  sacrifices  already  made  and  accepted  by  the 
Belgian  nation  is  added  another.  So  as  better  to  bring 
to  nauglit  the  designs  of  the  invader  the  Belgian  Govern- 
ment has  provisionally  established  itself  in  a  place 
where  on  the  one  hand  it  may  rest  in  contact  with  the 
Army,  and  on  the  other,  with  the  help  of  France  and 
England,  it  may  better  exercise  and  continue  the 
national  sovereignty.  That  is  why  it  has  left  Ostend, 
carrying  with  it  the  memory  of  the  warm  reception  that 
town  extended  to  it.  The  Belgian  Government  goes  to 
Havre,  where  the  noble  friendship  of  the  French  Republic 
willpermitit  at  the  same  time  the  fullness  of  its  sovereign 
rights  and  the  complete  exercise  of  its  authority  and  its 
duty. 

This  momentary  tribulation  to  which  our  patriotism 
ought  to  yield  will  have,  we  are  convinced,  a  prompt 
revenge.      The  public  services  in  Belgium  will  continue 


in  such  measure  as  the  local  circumstances  may  permit. 
The  King  and  the  Government  count  on  the  wisdom  of 
your  patriotism.  On  your  side  count  on  the  ardent 
devotion,  on  the  valour  of  our  Army,  ami  the  help  of 
the  Allies  to  hasten  the  hour  of  the  common  deliverance. 
Our  dear  country,  so  odiously  treated  by  one  of  the 
Powers  which  had  sworn  to  guarantee  our  neutrality, 
has  excited  an  astonished  admiration  throughout  the 
entire  world.  Thanks  to  the  unanimity,  the  courage, 
and  the  clear-sightedness  of  all  our  children,  she  will 
remain  worthy  of  that  admiration  which  comforts  her 
to-day.  To-morrow  she  will  emerge  from  her  tribula- 
tion greater  and  more  beautiful,  having  suffered  for  the 
justice  and  for  the  honour  of  civilization  itself. 
Long  live  Belgium.  Free  and  Independent. 

A  Belgian  galloped  up  shouting  :  "  The  Ger- 
mans are  coming.  The  Germans  are  coming."' 
A  lieutenant  and  six  Uhlans  trotted  into 
the  central  square ;  behind  them  was  a 
detachment  of  twenty  cyclists.  Half-an-hoiu- 
later  General  von  der  Goltz,  the  ex-trainer  of 
the  Turkish  Army,  author  of  "  The  Nation  in 
Arms,"  and  Governor  of  Belgium,  motored  in, 
and  soon  after  left  with  the  Burgomaster 
for  Bruges.  The  day  afterwards  Ostend  was 
filled  with  German  officers  and  soldiers.  The 
3rd  German  Reserve  Corps  was  quartered  in 
or  around  it,  and  forty  officers  of  the  Staff  were 
feasting  at  the  Hotel  Royal  du  Phare.  Magnums 
of  looted  champagne  and  quarts  of  stolen 
Burgundy  "  lined  the  centre  of  the  two  long 
tables." 


GENERAL    MAUD'IIUY    (right) 
Talking  to  a  French  officer. 


10 


THF     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


BRITISH    TROOPS    AT    OSTEND. 

Simultaneously  with  the  exodus  to  England 
by  boat,  there  had  been  an  exodus  on  foot  or 
on  wheels  to  France.  Vehicles  of  all  sorts, 
crowded  with  hmnan  beings  or  piled  high  with 
their  belongings,  had  been  rolling  along  the 
muddy,  cobbled  roads  to  the  French  frontier. 
An  endless  stream  of  men,  women,  and  childi-en, 
sopked  to  the  skin  by  the  incessant  rain,  some 
with  their  clothes  reduced  to  rags,  sleeping  for 
the  most  part  in  the  fields,  unfed,  unwashed, 
their  feet  lacerated  by  their  unwonted  exertions, 
straggled  slowly  across  the  border.  How  many 
died,  how  many  were  crippled  for  life,  how  many 
lost  their  reason  will  probably  never  be  known. 


Behind,  or  among  the  fugitives,  marched  or 
rode  what  remained  of  the  heroic  Belgian  Army. 
As  early  as  October  12  the  vanguard  passed 
through  Fiu-nes.  A  Times  correspondent  on 
that  day  saw  it  defiling  through  the  streets  of 
the  little  town. 

I  have  just  returned  from  Fumes,  the  first  town 
across  the  Belgian  frontier  on  the  road  to  Ostend.  There 
I  met  the  head  of  the  army.  They  began  to  arrive 
yesterday  between  5  and  6  in  trains,  in  trams,  and  by 
road,  and  completely  upset  the  Sunday  evening  calm  of 
the  little  town.  The  people  were  just  trickling  out  of 
church,  and  the  priest  and  his  surpliced  choir  boys  were 
slowly  walking  in  procession  across  the  square  when  the 
first  transport  motor-cars  arrived.  Then  came  a  Red 
Cross  detachment,  a  mixed  bodj'  of  soldiers,  civilians,  and 
priests,  who  had  come  by  tram  from  Ostend  ;  they  were 
followed  by  the  troops  themselves,  and  an  hour  later  the 
little  square  with  its  high  crow-stepped  gables  was 
crammed  with  parked  autonmobiles,  and  a  steady  stream 
of  infantry,  wagons,  and  guns  was  moving  by  in  the 
lamplight. 

Most  of  the  troops  had  marched  out  of  Antwerp  three 
days  ago.  The  town  wa^  becoming  untenable  and  a  field 
army  could  do  nothing.  "  We  have  done  our  best,"  the 
soldiers  kept  saying.  There  was  little  sign  of  demoraliza- 
tion among  them.  The  infantry  in  particular  seemed 
glad  to  be  out  of  Antwerp,  where  they  were  at  the  mercy 
of  the  Germans'  big  guns,  and  to  have  a  chance  of 
meeting  them  again  in  the  open.  Fighting  is  all  very 
well,  but  sitting  in  a  trench  without  firing  a  shot,  while 
100  lb.  shells  come  shrieking  over  six  or  seven  miles  of 
country  to  kill  and  bury  you  at  the  same  time,  is  a 
depressing  occupation.  Such,  at  least,  was  what  the 
infantry  felt,  and  they  were  glad  to  have  done  with  it. 

All  the  coast  district  from  here  to  Ostend  is  crowded 
with  refugees  who  have  fled  from  Antwerj)  to  Ghent, 
from  Ghent  to  Ostend,  and  are  now  making  their  way 
into  France.  The  French  Consulate  at  Furnes  was 
besieged  by  hvmdreds  of  people  waiting  to  get  their 
passports  vi/id.  As  the  railway  is  now  entirely  reserved 
for  military  purposes,  the  roads  are  black  with  travellers 
in  every  sort  of  vehicle.  Many  of  them  have  no  fixed 
idea  of  where  they  are  going,  and  move  on  from  place 
to  place  wherever  they  can  find  beds.  Several  thousand 
are  stranded  at  Panne,  a  little  village  on  the  dunes  near 
Furnes.  for  the  sole  reason  that  it  is  the  terminus  of  a 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


11 


local  tramway,  and  once  thcro  they  can  get  no  further 
without  going  back  the  way  they  came. 

Others  are  going  to  Calais  in  order  to  take  the  boat 
to  England.  Again  and  again  I  have  been  anxiously 
questioned  by  poor  people  about  the  price  of  living  in 
England,  and  as  to  where  it  would  be  best  to  go.  I  have 
es.sured  them  that  everything  would  be  done  to  help 
them  in  England,  and  that  those  who  had  not  frienda 
there  already  to  go  to  would  speedily  find  them. 

A  portion  of  the  Belgian  Army  halted  on  the 
Yser  and  faced  the  hated  foe  ;  the  rest  retired 
into  France.  "  You  can  imagine,"  wrote  a 
Belgian  officer  to  a  friend,  "  with  what  grief  I 
crossed  the  frontier,  followed  by  my  squadrons, 
and  left  our  native  soU.  I  do  not  even  hide 
from  you  the  fact  that  I  rode  ahead  of  my  Staff 
so  that  they  might  not  witness  my  emotion. 
But  let  us  hope,"  he  added,  "  that  God  may  give 
us  the  happiness  to  recross  it,  driving  before  us 
these  slave-merchants  of  the  twentieth  century." 
Though  the  uniforms  of  the  Belgian  soldiers 
were  caked  with  mud  or  soddened  with  rain,  and 
their  boots  and  gaiters  were  adliering  to  their 
swollen  feet,  though  the  plight  of  Belgian 
civilians  was  a  miserable  one,  all  alike,  from 
their  King  downwards  to  the  boy  of  eleven 
who  was  observed  riding  on  a  tall  horse  and 
smiling  to  the  passers-by,  were  resolved  to 
assist  the  French  and  British  now  hurrying  up  to 
avenge  the  outrages  committed  by  the  "  slave- 
merchants  "  from  beyond  the  Rhine.     But  for 


a  time  nine-tenths  of  Belgium  was  left  to  the 
mercy  of  her  enemies. 

Here  one  criticism  may  be  safely  ventured  on 
the  German  strategy.  Before  Sir  Henry  Ra\\  lin- 
son's  force  landed  at  Ostend  and  Zeebrugge 
there  appears  to  have  been  nothing  but  the 
two  French  Territorial  Divisions  and  some 
cavalry  roimd  Dunkirk  to  prevent  a  Gennan 
Army  crossing  the  Lys  between  Ghent  and 
Courtrai  and  advancing  tlirough  Roulers  and 
Thourout  on  Bruges  and  Ostend.  Even  after 
the  British  IV.  Corps  (minus  the  8th  Division 
which  was  not  yet  mobilised)  had  issued  from 
Bruges,  the  German  leaders,  considering  the 
railway  and  road  facilities  and  the  motor 
traction  at  their  disposal,  ought  to  have  been 
able  to  concentrate  between  the  Lys  and  the 
Belgian  coast  overwhelming  forces.  Had  they 
done  so  and  the  movement  been  properly  timed, 
they  might  have  occupied  Ostend  and  Bruges 
before,  or  inmaediately  after,  the  fall  of  Antwerp. 
In  that  case  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the 
Belgian  Army  and  its  British  auxiliaries  could 
have  escaped  destruction  or  capture. 

To  have  permitted  the  mass  of  the  Army 
defending  Antwerp  to  retire  to  the  line  Ghent- 
Selzaete  may  have  been  pardonable.  Until 
Antwerp  was  actually  taken  the  garrison  could 
not  be  pursued  through  the  city,  and  to  cut 


A    BELGIAN    ARMOURED    TRAIN. 


12 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


thoir  retreat  by  crossing  the  Scheldt  between 
Antwerp  and  Ghent  in  face  of  desperate  troops 
well  supplied  with  artillerj^  was  no  light  under- 
taking. But  it  was  a  different  matter  to 
traverse  the  undefended  Lys  and  move  over  the 
easy  country  from  that  river  to  the  environs  of 
Bruges  and  Ostend. 

Two  explanations  for  the  strange  behaviour 
of  the  German  General  or  Generals  may  be 
hazarded.  They  undoubtedly  overestimated 
the  numbers  of  the  French  troops  spread  out 
from  Dunkirk  to  Lens  ;  they  may  have  imagined 
that  Lord  Kitchener  would  pour  a  much  larger 
force  than  he  actually  did  into  Ostend  and 
Zeebrugge.  The  overestimate  of  the  French 
forces  resulted  from  a  variety  of  causes. 

One  of  the  chief  advantages  with  which  the 
Germans  had  started  the  war  had  been  that  the 
countries  invaded  by  them  were  swarnaing  with 
the  Kaiser's  spies — often  in  the  possession  of 
wireless  installations.  By  October,  however, 
the  nmnber  of  spies  and  traitors  within  the 
Allied  lines  could  have  been  but  small.  The 
Belgian  and  French  officers  and  officials  had 
not  played  with  espionage ;  among  German 
spies  the  mortality  had  been  very  high  ;  and 
shot  or  hanged  spies  could  not  quickly  be 
replaced. 

From  Belgians  and  Frenchmen  no  reliable 
information  could  be  obtained  by  the  Germa;ns. 
The  latter's  ferocity,  greed,  and  insolence  had 
united  their  neighbours  against  them  to  an 
extent  wliich  would  never  have  been  credited 
before  the  war.  Cosmopolitan  Socialists  and 
Republicans  had  become  the  bitterest  ojjpo- 
nents  of  the  Germans.  A  rigid  censorshijj  of 
letters,  postcards,  and  telegrams  had,  too, 
minimized  the  chances  of  useful  information 
with  regard  to  the  Allied  Forces  reaching  Berlin 
through  Great  Britain  or  neutral  countries. 

The  German  leaders  had  now  to  rely  for 
their  knowledge  of  the  Allied  movements 
mainly  on  the  reports  of  their  cavalry,  auto- 
mobolists,  cyclists,  and  airmen.  Unfortunately 
for  them  the  German  cavalry  woiild  seldom  in 
equal  nmnbers  face  the  British  or  French,  and 
the  Allies,  although  badly  provided  with 
armoured  motor-cars  at  the  outset  of  the  war, 
had  in  October  a  sufficiencj'^  of  land  cruisers  to 
render  the  expeditions  of  German  automobilists 
in  advance  of  the  main  bodies  very  dangerous.  * 
We  have  seen  that  the  British  IV.  Corps  was 


*  See  an  interesting  article,  "  La  Guerre  en  Auto- 
mobiles," in  the  Lectures  pour  Tous  of  January  15, 
1915. 


accompanied  by  several  armoured  cars,  which 
rendered  an  excellent  account  of  themselves. 

As  for  aeroplane  reconnaissance  :  the  French 
and  British  aviators  were  more  than  a  matcli 
for  the  Germans,  and  the  scouts  on  "  Taubes," 
when  reconnoitring,  found  it  more  and  more 
difficult  to  survey  at  their  leisure  the  country 
beneath  them.  Even  when  undisturbed  by 
enemy  air-craft  or  fire  from  below  the  aerial 
observer,  however  skilled,  was  liable  to  make  bad 
mistakes.  In  August,  when  the  days  were 
long,  the  weather  fine,  and  the  air  clear,  watching 
from  the  skies  had  been  comparatively  easy. 
But  the  nights  were  lengthening,  rain  coming 
down,  and  mists  and  fogs  covered  the  surface 
of  the  ground.  The  leaves  had  not  j'et  fallen, 
and  were  turning  the  colour  of  khaki,  and  so  the 
woods  afforded  considerable  cover. 

For  all  these  reasons  the  German  Staff  could 
not  see  clearly  the  forces  opposed  to  them  on 
the  huge  chessboard.  Taken  prisoner  in  the 
fighting  round  Dixmude,  which  will  be  described 
in  a  subsequent  chapter,  a  Prussian  Major  asked 
his  captors  the  number  of  the  forces  opposed 
to  the  Germans  at  that  point. 

"  Forty  thousand,  I  suppose  ?  "  he  queried. 

"  Yes,  yes,"  answered  a  French  officer, 
indicating  by  his  manner  that  he  was  not 
answering  the  question. 

"But  tell  me  how  many,"  pleaded  the 
German. 

"  Six  thousand,"  was  the  suave  reply. 

The  other  burst  into  tears. 

"  Ah  !  if  we  had  known  !  "  he  cried.* 

The  strategy  of  Joffre  and  his  Ueutenants  also 
mj'^stified  the  Germans. 

"  I  have  attacked  the  Germans  to  make 
them  believe  that  I  was  in  force,"  said  General 
d'Urbal,  referring  to  the  fighting  in  the  first 
fortnight  of  October.  "  T  have  multipUed  the 
actions,  I  have  harassed  them  day  and  night 
without  giving  them  a  moment's  rest.  Mean- 
while, my  army  was  being  formed  ;  each  day 
reinforcements  were  reacliing  me." 

The  other  explanation  why  the  Germans  pro- 
ceeded with  so  much  caution  and  by  the  wrong 
route  to  Ostend  and  Bruges  is  that  they  could 
not  read  into  Lord  Kitchener's  mind  and  know 
what  forces  he  was  sending  to  Ostend  and  Zee- 
brugge. Mr.  Winston  Churchill's  presence  at 
Antwerp  must  have  suggested  to  them  that  the 
British  set  immense  importance  on  the  retention 
by  the  Allies  of  that  city  and  a  fortiori  on  the 

*  Lectures  pour  Tous,  January  15,  1915,  p.  426. 


THE     TIMES    HISTOBY    OF     THE    WAB. 


13 


A    BRITISH    HEAVY    GUN. 
The  markings  are  daubs  of  paint  which  help  to  render  the  gun  invisible. 


holding  of  Ostend  and  Zeebrugge,  from  wliicii 
submarines  and  aircraft  could  operate  in  the 
Straits  of  Dover  and  the  estuaries  of  the 
Thames  and  Medway.  That  the  First  Lord  of 
the  Admiralty  should  have  rushed  away  from 
tlie  most  responsible  duties  to  lead  Marines  iu 
Antwerp  must,  it  may  be  surmised,  have  made 
the  Staff  officers  round  the  Kaiser  pause. 

Since  1807  the  military  policy  of  Prvissia  had 
been  always  to  run  no  excessive,  no  avoidable 
risks.  The  Prui-:sian  Ai"my  did  not  desert 
Xapoleon  I.  until  they  were  aware  that  nearly 
the  whole  of  the  Grande  .\rmee  had  jierishecl 
in  Russia.  Even  then  they  waited  for  t)ie 
advancing  legions  of  the  Czar  to  arrive.  The 
Prussians  had  attacked  Denmark  in  18(>4,  but 
they  had  the  Austrian  Army  supporting  them  ; 
they  attacked  Austria  in  18(>6,  after  Bismarck 
had  induced  Italy  to  help  thorn  and  Napoleon 
III.  to  remaiii  neutral.  In  1870  IJismarck 
had  Moltke's  and  Roon's  assurance  that  the 
German  Armies  were  immeasurably  supei'ior 
to  the  {""rcnch,  and  the  Czar's  promise  that 
Russia  would  not  permit  Francis  .losepli  to 
assist  Napoleon  111.  In  the  light  of  subsequent 
events  it  may  seem  strange,  but  there  can  V)e 
no  doubt  that  the  Kaiser  and  his  oilicers  had 


entered  on  the  Great  War  in  the  fiiiu  belief 
that  they  would  break  up  the  French  in  the 
first  three  weeks  of  the  struggle. 

To  calculating  schemers  of  the  Prussian 
type  unexpected  moves  were  most  distiu-binir. 
The  regret  felt  by  the  Germans  that  a  civilian 
was  not  British  Minister  of  War  must  at  this 
moment  have  been  intepj5e.  Unable  to  surmise 
their  astute  and  experienced  adversary's  hand, 
unable  to  look  over  his  or  Jof^re's  shoulder,  they 
hesitated,  played  for  safety,  and  the  oppor- 
tunity of  capturing  or  annihilating  tlie  Belgian 
army  and  the  British  IV.  Corps  was  lost  for 
ever.  They  had  to  content  themselves  with 
having  obtained  an  unfortilied  post,  Ostend. 
70  miles  distant  from  Doxcr.  which  foruicd 
the  first  milestone  on  the  road  to  London. 

But  though  the  enemy's  army  had  escapnl, 
the  conquest  of  the  Belgian  coast  line  between 
Ostend  andliie  Dutch  frontier,  the  ncqui.sitioi. 
of  Ostend,  of  Zeebrugge,  and  th(>  ship  canal 
from  Zeebrugge  to  Bruges,  of  the  Canal  div 
Ghent,  of  the  Scheldt  from  (ihent  to  Antwerp, 
and  of  the  railways  from  .Antwerp  to  the  coast. 
were  from  th(>  i'an-German  jjoint  of  view  i\<> 
mean  achicxcmcnts.  Tin-  Kai-cr  liad  perfDrnu-d 
part    of   hi<   coMtr.ict.      'I'iic  Gi-rmans   liad   l>e<-u 


14 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAE. 


ON    THE    GERMAN    LINE    OF    COMMUNICATIONS. 


content  to  leave  their  liberties  in  liis  hands  on 
the  understanding  that  he  would  deprive  the 
British  of  the  command  of  the  sea.  From 
Eniden,  Wilhelmshaven,  Bremerhaven,  Heligo- 
land, Cuxhaven,  and  the  mouths  of  the  Elbe  and 
Kiel  Canal  to  strike  at  the  British  Fleet,  to  raid 
the  British  naval  bases,  to  invade  the  British 
coast,  l\ad  hitherto  been  proved  to  be  imprac- 
ticable. 

Ostend     and     Zeebrugge     once     gained,    all 
attempts  of  this   kind  might  be   feasible.      The 


German  "  High  Seas  Fleet  "  being  intact  sub- 
marines could  be  transported  to  Zeebrugge, 
or  built  there  ;  boats  and  barges  for  the 
transport  of  troops  to  Kent  or  Essex  might  be 
accumulated  in  the  watervvay.s  between  Aj\\- 
^^'erp  and  the  coast,  as  Napoleon  had  done  a 
hundred  and  ten  years  before. 

Abo\-e  all,  a  convenient  base  for  aeroplanes. 
Zeppelins,  and  Par.sevals,  which  might  bombard 
Portsmouth,  Dover,  Chatham,  Harwich  and 
London,  had  been  annexed. 


CHAPTER    XLVIII. 


THE  ADVANCE  ON  YPRES 


The  Plan  of  the  Allied  Advance — The  French  Cavalry  Cross  the  i-,Ys— The  Attack 
ON  the  German  Line  between  Kstaires  and  La  Bassee — The  Field  of  Battle — The  Batti.I'; 
OF  La  Bassee — The  Fall  of  Lille — The  Movement  osi  Ypres — Actions  of  Meteren  and 
Mont-des-Cats — Occupation  of  Ypres,  Bailletjl.  and  Armentieres — Attempt  to  Cross 
the  Lys  near  Menin — End  of  the  Allied  Offensive. 


WHILE  the  Belgian  Army  was  with- 
drawing to  the  banks  of  the  Yser 
and  the  British  IV.  Corps  (Sir 
Henry  Rawhnson's)  was  protect- 
ing the  flank  of  the  retiring  divisions  by  occu- 
pying the  country  between  Bruges  and  Ypres, 
the  third  attempt  of  General  Joi^re  to  turn  the 
right  wing  of  the  main  German  army  was  in 
progress.  Lille,  the  importance  of  which  to  the 
French  was  explained  in  Chapter  XLVL, 
p.  479,  had  been  bombarded  on  October  10. 
As  detachments  of  Germans  had  passed  west- 
ward between  this  town  and  the  Lys  and  were 
to  the  north  of  the  St.  Omer-Aire-Bethune-La 
Bassee-I.iille  Canal  in  the  vicinity  of  Merville, 
and  as  the  right  wing  of  the  army  opposing 
Maud'huy  extended  to  La  Bassee,  Ijille  ran  the 
risic  of  being  completely  isolated  and  its  garrison 
of  French  Territorials  captured.  To  obviate 
this  disaster  the  offensive  had  pronijjtly  to  be 
resumed.  It  had  been  brought  to  a  standstill 
after  Maud'hiiy's  unsuccessful  advance  through 
Arras. 

For  a  renewed  offensive  there  were  available 
on  the  9th  the  skeleton  army  of  General  d'Urbal 
based  on  Dunkirk  and  the  British  7th  Infantry 
Division  and  IJrd  Cavalry  Division  round 
Bruges.  Ypres  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Ger- 
mans and  the  latter  were  operating  on  both 


banks  of  the  Upper  Lys.  The  comparatively 
small  Allied  forces  north  of  the  Lys  were, 
therefore,  fully  employed,  and  the  only 
hope  for  Lille  lay  in  the  now  rapidly- 
approaching  II.,  III.  and  Cavalry  Corps  of  the 
British  Expeditionary  Force  coming  from  tlie 
Aisne. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  on  tlie  8tli  General 
Foch  had  arranged  at  Doullens  with  Sir  John 
French  that  Sir  Horace  Smith-Dorrien  with  the 
II.  Corps  should  arrive  on  the  line  Aire- 
Bethune  by  the  11th.  This  corps  was  to 
prolong  Maud'huy's  Army  to  the  north  and, 
pivoting  on  the  French  position  to  the  west  of 
La  Bassee,  attack  in  flank  the  German  troops 
stationed  there.  The  Cavalry  Corps  under 
General  Allenby,  of  which  the  2nd  Division 
(General  Gough's)  had  marched  from  Com- 
piegne  on  October  3,  was,  with  (Jeneial 
Conneau's  Cavalry  Corps,  to  protect  Sir  Horace 
Smith-Dorrien's  left  flank  from  the  attack  of 
the  Germans  north  and  south  of  the  l.,ys. 
When  the  III.  Corps  (GeJieral  Pulteney's)  \uni 
detrained  at  St.  Omer,  north  of  the  Lys,  wliich 
would  not  be  till  the  12th,  Allenby — but  not 
Conneau — was  to  move  to  rulteney's  U-ft 
wing.  General  d'Urbal's  87th  and  8!)t  li  'l\ii  i- 
torial  Divisions  under  GenerrJ  Bidon,  to  l)t' 
supported  later  by  foiu*  French  Cavaln  1  )ivi.sn)ns 


16 


16 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


under  General  de  Mitry,  the  British  Cavalry 
Corps  and  the  III.  Corps  were  to  sweep  the 
Germans  east  of  the  line  Dixmude-Ypres- 
Comines  and  effect  a  junction  with  the  British 
IV.  Corps  (Sir  Homy  RawHnson's)  and  the 
Belgian  Army.  Into  JJixmude  wore  to  be 
thrown  a  ))ody  of  French  ^Marines  under  Rear- 
Admiral  Rornarc'h  ;  into  Nieuport,  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Yser.  a  division  of  French  troops 
commanded  by  General  Grossetti. 

Obviously,  this  ])lan  for  the  employment  of 
the  British  Expeditionary  Force — 7ni)ius  the 
I.  Corps  (Sir  Douglas  Haig's),  which  it  was 
calculated  \\  ould  not  reach  St.  Onier  till  about 
October  19 — contemplated,  besides  the  saving 
of  Lille,  the  probability  that  the  Germans  north 
of  the  Lys  might  make  a  rush  for  Calais  and 
Dunkirk  or  endeavour  to  envelop  and  destroy 
the  British  IV.  Corps  and  the  Belgian  Army 
retiring  behind  it.  Otherwise  the  Corps  of 
AUenby  and  Pulteney  would  have  remained 
south  of  the  Lys,  and  supported  Smith-Dorrien 
in  his  advance  on  Lille. 

Foch's  decision  to  leave  Smith-Dorrien  with 
Maud'huy  to  save,  if  they  could,  Lille,  was  a 
wise  one.  The  misty  weather  had  hampered 
aerial  reconnaissance,  and  the  numbers  of  the 
Germans  north  of  the  Lys  could  only  be  guessed. 
Weighed  against  the  preservation  of  the  Belgian 
Army,  of  RawHnson's  Corps,  the  forces  of 
d'Urbal,  of  Calais  and  Dunkirk,  the  safety  of 
Lille  and  its  garrison  had  to  be  subordinated  to 
the  major  interests  of  France  and  the  Allies. 

The  stakes  were  too  tremendous  for  senti- 
mental reasons  connected  with  Lille  to  affect 
Joffre  and  Foch.  Nearly  the  whole  of  Belgium 
had  been  overrun  by  the  Germans  and,  accord- 
ing to  M.  Clemenceau,  Count  Bernstorff,  the 
Cierman  Ambassador  at  Washington,  had  de- 
clared that  the  only  conditions  of  peace  whieli 
the  Kaiser  would  grant  to  France  were  : 

1.  The  cession  to  Germany  of  all  the  territory  north 
and  east  of  a  straight  line  drawn  from  the  mouth  of  the 
Sonime  to  Lyons — in  other  words,  the  redviction  of 
millions  of  French  men  and  women  to  a  worse  position 
than  that  of  the  Alsatians  before  the  war  ;  the  loss  of 
some  of  the  most  venerated  places  and  monuments  in 
France — e.fjr.,  the  battlefields  of  Valmy  and  Montmirai!, 
the  Cathedral  of  Reims  and  the  cottage  of  Joan  of  Are  ; 
the  acquisition  by  the  Germans  of  the  rich  coal  coimtry 
round  Lille,  of  the  vineyards  of  Champagne  and  Bur- 
gundy, and  the  extension  of  the  German  frontier  to  the 
outskirts  of  Paris  and  Lyons. 

2.  The  surrender  to  Gennany  of  Algiers,  Timis,  and 
all  other  French  Colonies,  and  also  the  French  Pro- 
tectorate of  Morocco. 

S.  The  payment  to  Germany  of  a  War  Indemnitv  of 
£400,000,000. 

4.  The  transfer  to  Germany  of  ."J.OOO.OOO  rifles,  .3,000 
guns,  and  40.000  horses  ;  the  dismantling  of  all  French 


fortresses,   and   the  suppression  of  recruiting  in    France 
for  twenty-five  years. 

5.  .A.n  alliance  with  {jcrmany  against  Great  Britain 
and  Russia,  and  a  cominereial  treaty  with  Germany 
for  twenty-five  years.  Under  the  commercial  treaty, 
(Jennan  merchandise  was  to  enter  France  free  of  duty, 
and  Kronch  patent  fees  were  not  to  be  payable  by 
(iermans. 

Wlu'ther  M.  CU-menceau  were  ill-inlormed  or 
not  as  to  Coimt  B(?rnstorff's  statements,  there 
could  be  little  doubt  that  if  the  Allies  were 
defeated  and  France  conquered,  a  treat\-  on 
some  such  lines  as  the  above  would  be  imjjosed 
on  the  French.  "  France,"  had  written  General 
Bernhardi,  "  nuist  be  so  completely  crushed 
that  she  can  never  again  cross  our  path.' 

On  October  9,  2,000  French  Dragoons  from 
Aire  were  ordered  by  General  Conneau  to  dis- 
lodge the  German  cavalry  lining  the  south  bank 
of  the  Lys  from  Mer\'ille  to  Estaires,  The 
crossings  at  those  places  were  covered  by 
machine  guns,  and  after  sunset  they  were 
illuminated  by  searchlights.  The  French  com- 
mander assembled  his  men  on  the  north  bank 
at  a  point  west  of  Merville  where  the  current 
was  very  swift  and  the  water  deep.  The  Ger- 
mans had  regarded  the  river  as  unfordable  at 
this  point,  but  a  trooper  who  was  a  good 
swimmer  stripped  and.  pulling  after  him  a 
light  line,  swam  to  the  right  bank.  The  line 
at  the  other  end  was  tied  to  a  heavy  rope  and 
when  the  diipping  soldier  stepped  out  of  the 
water  he  hauled  the  rope  across  and  fastened 
it  securely  to  the  trunk  of  a  tree.  The  other 
end  was  similarly  secured  and,  assisted  by  the 
rope,  the  men  on  horseback  filed  one  by  one 
across  the  river  during  the  night.  At  daybreak 
(October  10)  the  w^hole  force  had  passed  safely 
and  the  hostile  horsemen  retired  in  the  direction 
of  Estaires.* 

The     character     of     the     fighting     in     ^\hich 
Conneau' s     Cavalry     was     engaged     was     ^\ell 


*  It  was  east  of  Estaires,  at  Sailly,  that  Lieutenant 
Wallon  the  well-known  rider,  fell  a  victim  to  German 
perfidy.  He  was  advancing  with  .some  Dragoons  ta 
seize  the  crossing  of  the  Lys  at  that  point.  Some 
distance  from  the  village  which  was  held  by  the  Germans 
the  party  entrenched  itself.  They  beat  off  an  attack 
and  shot  several  German  scouts.  Soon  eleven  "'  pea.- 
sants  "  with  picks  and  spades  over  their  shoulders  were 
-een  moving  towards  the  French.  When  these 
"  peasants  "  were  within  40  yards  or  so  of  the  trenches, 
they  suddenly  dropped  their  stolen  implements  and 
drawing  concealed  revolvers  emptied  them  into  the 
French,  while  their  comrades  in  front  of  the  \illage 
opened  a  general  fusilade.  A  ball  struck  Lieutenant 
Wallon  in  the  chest.  He  dropped  to  the  ground. 
Sergeant  Rossa,  in  spite  of  the  woimded  man's  protests, 
dragged  him  to  the  rear  and  placed  him  on  a  cart. 
Shortly  after  he  expired.  The  eleven  "  peasants  "  were 
shot  and  the  village  taken. 


THE     TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


17 


FRENCH    INFANTRY   GUARDING    THE   RAILWAY    LINES   SOUTH   OF   LA   BASSEE. 


described  in  the  Standard  on  the  authority  of 
a  ^\  ounded  French  ofHicer.  "  There  are  no 
longer,"  he  said,  "massed  charges  in  \vhicli 
tlioiisands  of  men  collide  in  formidable  shock, 
hut  cngagonients  of  detail,  in  which  ruse  and 
decision  play  the  greatest  part.  The  side  which 
succeeds   in   surprising   the   other,   in   filtering 


through  its  lines,  in  gaining  ground  without 
arousing  the  attention  of  the  enemy,  obtain^ 
an  indisputable  advantage."  He  illustrated 
the  point  by  two  examples. 

A  regiiucTit  of  Fren<h  Cavalry  wius  deputeil 
to  cross  from  the  south  to  the  north  bank  of  the 
Lys.     The  Gennan.s  had  here  broken  down  tlie 


IS 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE     WAR. 


GERMAN    PRISONERS    IN    CHARGE    OF    SPAHIS. 


bridges  and  their  giuxs  commanded  all  the 
fords.  In  the  middle  of  the  night  a  reservist, 
and  four  troo}:er-;.  like  the  Dragoon  who  swana 
across  the  Lys  between  Aire  and  ]\Ierville, 
plunged  into  the  river  at  a  spot  where  it  was 
\mfordable.  They  reached  tlie  left  bank  and 
installed  cables  which  permitted  a  bridge  to  be 
rapidly  constructed.  An  hovir  later  the  whole 
regiment  was  north  of  the  Lys. 

The  other  incident  occurred  between  La 
Bassce  and  Estaires.  At  dawn  some  600 
l^lilajis,  taking  advantage  of  a  thick  fog, 
occupied  one  among  the  numerous  villages 
tliat  stretch  like  a  chain  from  the  La  Bassee- 
Lille  Canal  to  the  Lys.  A  captain,  with  the 
officer  who  told  the  storj',  was  sent  with  80 
Cuirassiers  to  reconnoitre.  In  half  an  hour  they 
were  tliree  hundred  yards  from  the  village,  and 
halted.  Dismounting,  a  sergeant  and  four  men 
crept  forward  through  the  dense  fog.  They 
found  the  Uhlans  camped  in  the  streets  or 
resting  m  the  houses.  On  hearing  this  the 
Cuirassiers  resumed  their  march.  Suddenly  a 
(jlerman  patrol  appeared  through  the  fog.  It 
was  immediately  captured,  and  the  French  rode 
on.  Close  up  to  the  village  church  the  French 
captain  gave  the  order  to  charge.  The  Germans 
offered  little  resistance  ;  many  were  killed  and 
\\  ounded  ;  2.50  were  made  prisoners  ;  the  rest  fled. 

This  example  shows  the  repeatedly-proved 
inferiority  of  the  German  Cavalry  to  that  of  the 


Allies,  which  was,  indeed,  one  of  the  most 
marked  features  of  the  war. 

The  French  and  British  Cavalry  habitually 
routed  the  vaunted  German  horsemen.  Re- 
membering the  past  history  of  the  Prussian 
Cavalry,  an  explanation  is  not  diflficult.  Cavalry 
is  an  arm  particularly  liable  to  impressions. 
On  the  results  of  the  fu'st  collisions  largely 
depend  the  futiu-e  conduct  of  the  arm.  Thus 
it  was  that  Frederick's  cavalry  won  for  him 
the  battles  of  the  Soor,  Hohenfriedberg  and 
Rosbach.  For  the  above  reason  forty  years 
later  it  \\ent  down  before  the  French  horse  at 
Auerstadt  and  Jena  like  corn  before  the  sickle, 
and  made  no  further  effort  during  the  war. 
It  cut  but  a  sorry  figure  in  186G,  but  in  1870 
did  good  service.  In  this  war  the  encounters 
of  the  German  with  the  British  Cavalry  were 
a  revelation  to  the  former.  Their  previous 
training  led  them  to  think  themselves  invincible. 
The  belief  was  as  erroneous  as  it  was  in  180(), 
and,  after  the  first  few  shocks,  they  seldom  tried 
to  meet  the  British  cavalry,  and  nearly  always 
tied  before  them.  The  same  was  true  when 
they  were  opposed  to  the  French.  The  moral 
of  their  opponents  was  superior  to  theirs,  and 
this  was  because  the  individual  men  were 
more  rationally  trained,  better  led  and  better 
manaPu\Ted. 

Conneau's  Dragoons  were  south  of  the  Lys 
on    the    10th.     The    next    day    (October    11) 


THE    TIMEIS    HISTORY     OF     THE     WAR. 


19 


General  Gough  with  the  2nd  C'a\iilry  Division 
cleared  the  German  cavalry  from  some  woods 
north  of  the  Bethune-Airo  ('anal.  The 
Division  i^laced  itself  astride  the  Lys,  its  right 
wing  in  touch  with  the  left  of  the  II.  Corps, 
which  had  crossed  the  canal  and  was  moving 
in  a  north-easterly  direction.  Goiigh's  left 
joined  hands  with  the  Divisional  Cavalry  of  the 
(itli  Infantry  Division  (III.  Corps)  near  Haze- 
brouck. 

The  right  of  the  German  front  rested  on 
I\[ont-des-Cats,  a  hill  some  500  feet  high  "  from 
which  radiate  spurs  like  fingers  from  the  jjalm 
of  the  hand  "  *  at  the  western  end  of  the  long 
ride  south-west  of  Ypres.  Mont-des-Cats  is 
opposite  the  little  hill  on  which  stands  Cassel, 
and  is  eight  miles  or  so  north-east  of  Haze- 
brouck  and  a  little  to  the  south  of  a  straight 
line  drawn  from  Cassel  to  Yj)res.  From  Mont- 
des-Cats  the  German  line  ran  south  through 
Meteren  to  Estaires  on  the  Lys  and  from  Es- 
taires  due  south  for  three  miles  tlu-ough  very 
intricate  country.  It  then  tiu-ned  slightly  to 
the  south-east,  "  passing  about  three  miles 
east  of  Bethune  "  tlirough  La  Bassee  to  Ver- 
melles.  West  of  the  German  front  were  de- 
tached bodies  of  cavalry  and  infantry.     It  was 

*  The  Eve-witness,  October   17. 


with  some  of  these  that  the  French  dragf)ons 
who  had  crossed  the  Lys  above  Merville  and 
General  Gough's  cavah-y  had  come  in  contact. 

The  task  allotted  to  Sir  Horace  Smith - 
Dorrien  with  the  11.  Corps  was  to  pierce 
through  the  German  line  between  Estaires 
on  the  Lys  and  La  Bassee  ;  he  would  be  aided 
by  Conneau's  Cavah-y  Corps  on  his  left.  The 
-Vllied  troops  were  then  to  wheel  to  the  right 
against  the  right  flank  of  the  Germans  en- 
trenched round  La  Bassee,  which  would  thus 
be  exposed,  while,  to  hold  the  latter  fast. 
Maud'huy  was  to  attack  them  in  front. 

The  locality  in  which  Sir  Horace  was  to 
operate  was  the  "  Black  Country  "  of  France, 
"  similar,"  as  Sir  John  French  observes,  "  to 
tliat  usually  fomid  in  manufacturing  districts 
and  covered  with  mining  works,  factories, 
buildings,  &c."  The  desperate  and  bloody 
Battle  of  Charleroi  (August  21-2)  had  been 
fought  under  analogous  circumstances. 

Like  the  rest  of  the  plain  of  the  Scheldt,  the 
country  was  very  flat.  The  word  "  plain," 
however,  which  is  associated  with  long  and 
uninterrupted  views,  does  not  convey  an  ade- 
quate idea  of  the  district  between  the  Lys 
and  the  Bethune-La  Bassee-Lille  Canal.  The 
military  Eye-witness  at  the  British  Headquartei-s 
sketched    the   landscape   in   graphic   language. 


MACHINE    GUN    SECTION    GUARDING    A    ROAD. 


20 


22 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


BRITISH    INFANTRY:    EXAMINING    ARMS. 


"  It  is  mainly,"  he  says,  "  an  industrial  region, 
and,  with  its  combination  of  mining  and  agri- 
culture, might  be  compared  to  our  Black 
Country,  \vith  Fen  lands  interspersed  between 
the  coal  mines  and  factories.  In  some  direc- 
tions the  villages  are  so  close  together  that  this 
district  has  been  described  as  one  inunense 
town,  of  which  the  various  parts  are  in  some 
places  separated  by  cultivation,  and  in  others  by 
groups  of  factories  bristling  with  chimneys. 
The  cultivated  portions  are  very  much  enclosed, 
and  are  cut  up  by  high,  unkempt  hedges  and 
ditches." 

Such  was  the  new  field  of  battle  as  it  appeared 
to  Sir  John  French  and  the  officer  on  his  Staf¥ 
who  supplied  the  descriptive  accounts  of  the 
movements  of  the  British  Expeditionary  Force. 
The  enemy  had  barricaded  themselves  in  many 
of  the  villages.  Nearly  all  these  villages  were 
defended  by  a  series  of  narrow,  inconspicuous 
trenches.  Driven  from  these  trenches  the 
Germans    retired    into    the    village    itself,    the 


streets  of  which  were  commanded  by  machine 
guns.  To  hide  them  from  observation  these 
were  often  placed  in  the  centre  of  roo  as. 
^Vhen  the  village  was  in  danger  of  being  taken 
incendiaries  set  fire  to  the  houses  on  the  out- 
skirts and.  under  cover  of  the  flames,  the 
defenders  retired  to  the  trenches  behind  t'.ie 
village.  If  the  British  or  French  put  the  fires 
out  and  themselves  occupied  the  village  it  \\  as 
heavily  shelled. 

Another  difficulty  encoimtered  was  this. 
Some  of  the  villages  on  the  line  of  march  were 
held,  others  were  left  undefended.  It  was  not 
imtil  the  cavalry,  cyclists  and  advance  guards 
had  thoroughly  recormoitered  a  village  and,  if 
it  was  held,  drawn  the  enemy's  fire,  that  the 
troops  behind  could  be  brought  through  it. 
The  danger  of  ambushes  in  this  network  of 
buildings  and  mounds  was  very  great,  and  the 
ambushes  of  the  past  were  by  no  means  as 
dangerous  or  as  difficult  to  detect  as  those  of 
modern  warfare.     In   1914:  two   or   three  men 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


•23 


liidden  with  a  machine  giin  might  destroy  a 
cohimn  of  soldiers. 

The  soldier  of  1914  had,  in  fact,  to  be  as 
meticulously  vigilant  as  the  n:iodern  surgeon. 
Behind  every  embankment,  spoil  heap,  hedge, 
in  thickets,  in  houses,  cottages,  factories,  as 
well  as  in  villages,  might  be  lurking  Germans 
with  rifles  and  mitrailleuses.  Broad  and  deep 
dykes  traversed  the  fields  and  meadows  betw  een 
the  villages,  and,  if  the  troops  had  to  deploy  on 
either  side  of  a  village,  farm,  or  factory,  they 
were  likely  to  be  met  by  these  obstacles,  for 
the  crossing  of  which  planks  or  ladders  had  to 
be  carried. 

Sir  Jolin  French  and  Sir  Horace  Smith- 
Dorrien  were  not  Hindenburgs  and  Kluclis. 
They  regarded  the  soldiers  entrusted  to  them 
as  their  comrades,  and  not  as  "  cannon-fodder  "; 
to  attempt  to  surprise  the  villages  by  clothing 
their  men  in  the  dress  of  German  soldiers  or 
French  peasants  or  workmen  was  in  the  eyes 
of  British  officers  dishonourable  ;  to  place 
prisoners,  much  less  civilians,  in  front  of  a 
column  of  attack  was  to  the  Allied  leaders  as 
an  abominable  crime.  The  appropriate  tactics 
from  the  British  and  French  standpoints  was 
to  deluge  the  villages  and  buildings  occupied  by 
the  enemy  with  common  shell  and  shrapnel, 
and  when  the  enemy's  nerves  were  shaken  and 
their  machine  guns  destroyed  or  buried  in  the 
ruins,  to  order  an  attack  with  the  bayonet, 
which  the  Germans  seldom  faced.  Unfor- 
tunately, as  mentioned,  the  weather  was  misty, 
and  the  flatness  of  the  country  and  its  enclosed 
nature  rendered  it  very  difficult  even  for 
howitzers  to  find  and  get  the  range  of  a  village 
unless,  indeed,  its  presence  was  indicated  by  a 
church  or  a  factory  chimney  rising  above  the 
trees  surrounding  it. 

Met  with  such  difficulties  it  might  have  been 
expected  that  the  III.  Corps  would  have  halted 
on  the  edge  of  the  "  Black  Country  "  or  joined 
the  TI.  Corps  and  the  Cavalry  Corps  to  the 
north  of  the  Lys  ;  and,  as  Lille  fell  on  Octo- 
ber 13,  it  may  be  plausibly  argued  that  either 
course  would  have  been  preferable  to  that 
which  was  actually  adopted.  Had,  however. 
Sir  Horace  Smith-Dorrien  not  attacked,  the 
Germans  might  have  poured  most  of  the  troops 
contained  by  him  across  the  Lys,  employed  them 
against  Sir  Heru-y  Rawlinson's  and  General 
d'Urbal's  forces,  and  turned  the  line  of  the  Yser. 

Indeed,  if  the  British  II.  Corps  had  followed 
the  III.,  the  Germans  between  the  Lys  and 
the  La  Bassee-Lille  Canal  would  have  certainlj 


been  sent  to  strengthen  the  front  between 
Mont-des-CatsandEstaires.  Had  then,  d'Urbal's 
Divisions,  with  the  II.  and  III.  Corps  and  the 
Cavalry  Corps,  been  imable  to  pierce  or 
turn  the  German  line  the  lY.  Corps  (Sir  Hem-y 
Rawlinson's)  might  have  been  caught  between 
the  Germans  advancing  through  Ghent  to 
Ostend  and  the  army  facing  d'Urbal  and  Sir 
John  French.  By  thrusting  the  II.  Corps 
against  the  flank  of  the  army  engaged  in  a 
desperate  struggle  with  Maud'huy's  force 
Sir  John  French  destroyed  the  last  chance  the 
Germans  had  of  oxerw helming  Sir  Henry  Raw- 
linson's Corps  and  the  Belgian  Army.  The 
vanguard  of  the  Belgians  reached  Fumes  on 
October  12,  the  day  Sir  Horace  commenced 
his  attack.  Other  points  had  their  weight.  If 
Sir  Horace  and  General  ^Nlaud'huy  had  cleared 
the  enemy  from  La  Bassee,  Lille  would  have 
still  svurendered,  but  the  effect  of  a  vict£)ry  at 
La  Bassee  might  have  been  decisive  on  the 
long-drawn  Battle  of  Arras.  The  tenacity 
with  which  the  Germans  coritinued  to  hold  on 
io  La  Bassee  shows  tlie  importance  they 
attached  to  it  in  their  scheme  for  crushing 
3Iaud'huy. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  ^laud'huy  had  been 
driven  to  the  Somme,  the  main  communications 


MAJOR-GENERAL    H.    de    la    P.    COUGH. 


•24 


THE    TIMES    HISTOUY    OF     THE     WAR. 


NEWS    FROM    THE    FRONT. 
Germans  in  the  trenches  writing  hurried  letters  home. 


of  d'Urbal's,  Sir  John  French's  and  now  King 
Albert's  Army  would  have  been  cut,  and  the 
whole  of  the  Allied  Forces  north  of  Bethune 
would  have  had  to  be  based  on  Etaples, 
Boulogne,  Calais  and  Dimkirk.  Needless  to 
say,  their  position  would  have  been  most  pre- 
carious :  most,  if  not  all,  of  the  gigantic  army 
hurled  a  week  or  so  later  by  the  Kaiser  into  the 
battle  which  goes  by  the  name  of  Ypres 
would  have  been  directed  against  them,  and, 
in  the  event  of  defeat,  they  would  have  had  to 
embark  at  three  small  ports,  an  undertaking 
M'hich,  in  the  days  of  guns  and  howitzers  with 
a  range  of  from  five  to  ten  miles  and  of  sub- 
marines and  bomb-dropping  airships  and  aero- 
planes, might  have  led  to  a  frightful  catas- 
trophe. To  add  Smith-Dorrien's  Corps  to 
Maud'huy's  Army  and  to  help  Maud'huy  to 
achieve  a  victory  or  to  avoid  a  defeat  was, 
therefore,  the  wisest  course  open  to  Joffre, 
Foch  and  French.  But  it  led  to  a  terrible 
strain  being  put  on  the  heroic  body  of  troops 
who  at  the  Battle  of  Le  Cateau  had  saved  the 
British  Expeditionary  Force  from  annihilation. 
Happily  the  II.  Corps  was  no  longer  opposed 
by  troops  of  the  same  quality  as  those  they  had 
.net  in  August,  nor  were  the  conditions  under 
which  they  opposed  them  so  unfavourable. 
Judged  by  the  following  Order  of  October  7  to 
the  German  14th  Reserve  Corps,  the  directors 
of  that  vast  organisation,  the  German  Army, 
-were  already  experiencing  difficulties  in  feeding 
and  munitioning  the  soldiers : 


It  is  notified  that  the  troops  must  no  longer  count 
on  the  regular  arrival  of  supplies.  They  must,  there- 
fore, utilize  the  resources  of  the  covintry  as  much  and  as 
carefully  as  possible. 

'J'he  regulation  for  the  use  of  the  iron  rations  must  be 
strictly  observed. 

In  spite  of  all  precautions  complaints  are  conlinually 
being  received  that  supply  and  ammunition  columns 
constantly  fail  to  arrive  becaiise  they  are  stopped  and 
unloaded  by  unauthorised  persons.  It  is  again  notified 
that  only  the  avithorities  to  whom  the  supplies,  &p.,  are 
eon--igned  have  the  right  to  take  dehvery  of  them. 

To  terrorise  the  Belgians  and  the  French  the 
disciples  of  Bernliardi  had  relaxed  the  bonds 
of  discipline  ;  they  had  encouraged  the  men  to 
murder,  rape,  burn,  get  drunk  and  loot.  It 
was  not  to  be  expected  that,  after  their  de- 
baucheries and  crimes,  the  soldiers  would 
rigidly  obey  the  call  of  duty  and  behave  with 
the  carefulness  of  ordinary  men. 

The  TI.  Corps  had  reached  the  Aire- 
Bethune  Canal  on  October  11.  As  related,  it 
crossed  the  Canal  the  same  day,  its  left  wing 
moving  in  a  north-easterly  direction.  Sir  John 
French  decided  that  on  the  12th  this  wing  was 
to  be  brought  up  in  the  direction  of  JVIerville, 
from  which  the  Uhlans  had  been  driven  by  the 
French  Dragoons  of  Conneau's  Cavalry  Corps, 
who  had  crossed  the  Lys  east  of  Aire.  Sir 
Horace  Smith-Dorrien  was  then  to  move  to  the 
line  Laventie-Lorgies.  The  former  place  is  a 
little  to  the  south-east  of  Estaires,  the  latter 
a  few  miles  to  the  north  of  La  Bassee.  He 
would  then  be  threatening  the  flank  of 
the   army    strtiggling    with    Maud'huy's.       On 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAB. 


'25 


October  12  the  5th  Division  (Sir  Charles 
Ferguson's)  "  connected  up  "  with  Maud'huy's 
left,  north  of  Annequin,  which  is  south  of  the 
canal  and  to  the  west  of  La  Bassee. 

To  counter  this  manoeuvre  the  Grermans 
extended  their  right.  The  3rd  Division  (Sir 
Hubert  Hamilton's)  now  d  ployed  on  the  left 
of  the  5th  Division  and  the  whole  of  the  II. 
Corps  advanced  to  the  attack,  but,  owing  to  the 
obstacles  already  described,  they  could  make 
little  headway.  Several  counter-attacks,  how- 
ever, were  repulsed  with  heavy  loss  to  the 
enemy,  who  abandoned  a  number  of  machine 
guns.  Conneau's  Cavalry  Corps  joined  in  the 
battle,  following  the  roads  between  Estaires 
tuid  Fle.urbaix,  Laventie,  Vieille  Chapelle, 
Lacouture  and  Richeboiu"g.  The  Germans  were 
defeated  in  almost  every  encovmter.  At  Vieille 
Chapelle  the  church  was  bombarded  and  left 
in  ruins,  and  in  the  kitchen  of  a  house  a  French 
Chassem"  engaged  in  an  Homeric  contest  with 
a  Uhlan.  Thrusting  and  cutting  at  the  German, 
the  Frenchman  drove  him  into  the  backyard, 
where  both  fell  mortally  wounded.  Thej'  were 
biu-ied  in  a  neighbouring  field.  Richebom*g 
was  set  on  fire  by  the  Germans  as  they  re- 
treated. The  first  bviilding  bvuiied  was  a 
factory  which  gave  employment  to  the  village. 

On  October  13  Sir  Horace  Smith-Dorrien, 
pivoting  on  Givenchy — a  village  two  miles  due 
west  of  La  Bassee — wheeled  to  the  south  and 
endeavoiu-ed  to  get  astride  the  La  Bassee-Lille 
road  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Fournes.  Thence 
he  would  menace  the  enemy's  position  on  the 
high  ground  south  of  La  Bassee.  In  the  course 
of  the  advance,  near  Pont  Fixe,  the  Dorsets 
and  other  regiments  of  the  7th  Brigade  es- 
pecially distinguished  themselves.  They,  like 
the  enemy,  were  entrenched.  During  the  night 
the  Germans  sapped  towards  them,  and  they 
towai-ds  the  Germans.  At  daybreak  a  British 
shell  dropped  into  and  burst  in  one  of  the 
advance  trendies  of  the  enemy.  Five  Germans 
were  taken  ])risoners.  "  I  saw  the  fellows," 
wrote  a  war  c  orrespondent  of  the  Daily  Chronicle, 
some  days  later,  "  and  they  undoubtedly 
belonged  to  the  last  line  of  the  German  Reserve. 
One  felt  sorry  for  them,  they  looked  starved, 
dirty  and  weary  to  death."  The  British  guns 
shelled,  and  the  infantry  fired  at  the  (Germans 
till  5  p.m.,  when  the  latter  abandoned  ail  but 
the  last  trench. 

By  this  time  only  a  ploughed  field  and  a 
couple  of  ditches  divided  the  two  infantries, 
and  the  soldiers  on  cither  side  could  be  heard 


cursing  each  other.  At  last  the  order  was 
given  to  the  British  to  fix  bayonets  and  charge. 
^^'ith  a  yell  they  rushed  forward  and,  in  the 
expressive  language  of  a  corporal,  "  dug  'em 
out  same  as  you'd  dig  bully  beef  out  of  a  can." 
Then  they  rushed  for  the  Aillages  behind  tiie 
trenches,  clearing  the  enemy  out  and  capturing 
a  mitrailleuse.  For  two  miles  the  chase  con- 
tinued. 

In  the  morning  of  October  14  the  battle  was 
continued,  the  advance  being  in  the  same 
direction. 

It  was  on  this  day  that  the  3rd  Division  and 
the  nation  suffered  a  heavy  loss.  WTiile  riding 
along  the  lines  the  Commander  of  that  Division, 
Sir  Hubert  Hamilton,  was  struck  by  a  shrapnel 
bullet.  He  fell  from  his  hor.se  and  died  im- 
mediately afterwards.  At  night  he  was  buried 
in  the  churchyard  of  the  little  village  of  Lacou- 
ture, three  French  Chasseurs  being  interred 
near  him.  An  eye-witness  described  the  scene 
to  a  Times  Correspondent : 

The  darkness  of  the  night  was  profound  and  the 
mourners  had  a  difficulty  in  distinguishing  the  features 
of  their  neit;hl)ours.  The  group  which  gathered  round 
the  grave  at  the  entrance  of  the  httle  village  of  Lacouture 
included  the  General  Staff  of  the  3rd  British  Division, 
delegates  of  the  Headquarters  Staff,  the  oiticers  of  the 
II.  Army  Corps,  led  by  Genera!  Smith-Dorrien  in  person, 
and  some  French  officers  attached  to  the  British  General 
Stnff. 


GRAVE     OF    GEN.    HUBERT     HAMILTON 
At  Lacouture. 


26 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


INDIANS    NEAR    LA    BASSEE. 


Owing  to  the  proximity  of  the  enemy  absolute  silence 
was  observed,  except  for  the  low  voice  of  tho  priest, 
advantage  being  taken  of  a  lull  in  the  attack.  Just  at 
the  moment  when  the  priest  was  saying  the  last  pra3'ers 
the  guns  began  to  roar  agam,  and  projectiles  whistled 
over  the  heads  of  the  nnourners.  The  German  attack 
was  directed  from  a  distance  of  a  few  hundred  yards. 
The  moment  was  well  chosen,  for  the  volle\s  fired  by  tl;e 
troops  of  the  Allies  in  honour  of  the  dead,  gloriously 
fallen  for  the  common  cause,  were  at  the  same  time 
volleys  of  vengeance.  Crackling  reports  of  rifles  con- 
tinued round  the  ruined  church,  but  the  \'oice  of  the 
priest,  reciting  the  last  words  of  the  Requiem,  lost 
nothing  of  its  calm  and  clearness. 

Soldiers  in  single  file  acted  as  an  escort  to  the  cemetery 
beside  the  little  church,  which  is  now  a  Tnass  of  ruins  in 
consequence  of  the  bombardment. 

Afterwards  Sir  Hubert  Hamilton's  body  was 
removed  and  reburied  in  his  native  land. 
Among  the  wreaths  on  his  tomb  was  one  from 
Lord  Ivitchener.  Hamilton  had  been  among 
the  ablest  of  Kitchener's  pupils  ;  he  had  been 
liis  ^Military  Secretary  in  India,  and  had  shown 
marked  ability  in  the  retreat  from  ^lons  and 
at  the  battles  of  the  Marne  and  Aisne. 

The  death  of  their  leader  was  avenged  by 
the  3rd  Division  on  tlie  15th  when,  as  Sir  John 
French  wrote,  "  they  fought  splendidly."  The 
dykes  in  their  way  were  crossed  with  planks, 
and  they  "  drove  the  enemy  from  one  en- 
trenched position  to  another  in  loop-holed 
villages.'"  By  nightfall  they  had  tlirust  the 
Oennans  off  the  Estaires-La  Bassee  Road,  and 
they  were  established  on  the  line  Pont  de  Ham- 
Croix  Barbee.  On  the  16th  the  left  of  the 
II.  Corps  was  in  front  of  Aubers,  wliich  was 


strongly  held.  The  next  day  this  village  was 
captured  by  the  9th  Infantrj-  Brigade^  and  at 
dark  the  village  of  HerUes,  south-east  of 
Aubers,  was  carried  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet 
after  a  fine  charge.  "  The  Brigade,"  remarks 
Sir  Jolin  French,  "  was  handled  with  great 
dash  by  Brigadier-General  Shaw."  At  this 
time  the  beUef  was  that  the  II.  Corps  was 
being  opposed  by  a  portion  of  the  14th  German 
Corps,  by  several  battaUons  of  Jaegers,  and  by 
the  2nd,  4th,  7th  and  9th  German  Cavalry 
Divisions. 

With  the  capture  of  Herlies  the  offensive  of 
Sir  Horace  Smith-Dorrien  came  to  an  end. 

The  Kaiser  was  about  to  begin  the  counter- 
offensive,  whicli  is  known  to  the  public  imder 
the  name  of  the  Battle  of  Ypres.  Sir  Horace 
Smith-Dorrion  had  not  been  able  to  drive  the 
Germans  out  of  their  position  at  La  Bassee  nor 
to  save  Lille. 

Before  describing  the  bombardment  and 
surrender  of  Lille  let  us  look  at  some  details  of 
the  fighting  between  the  Lys  and  the  canal, 
\\liich  have  some  value  in  completing  the 
pictvire  of  the  war.  The  British  "  Eyewitness  " 
states  : 

Parts  of  the  legion  where  fighting  has  been  in  progress 
now  present,  a  melancholy  aspect.  Many  of  the  once 
prosperous  homesteads  and  hamlets  are  literally  torn 
to  pieces,  the  walls  still  standing  pitted  by  shrapnel  balls, 
and  in  some  of  the  villages  the  churches  are  smouldering 
ruins.  Dead  horses,  cows,  and  pigs  which  have  been 
caught  in  tlie  hail  of  shrapnel  litter  the  village  sti-eets;. 


THE     TIMES    HISTOBY    OF     THE    WAR. 


27 


iind  among  the  carcases  and  (M'lris  wander  the  wretched 
inhabitants,  who  have  returned  to  see  what  they  can 
save  from  the  wreckage.  Here,  blocking  up  a  narrow 
side  street  is  a  dead  horse  still  harnessed  to  a  trap  and 
beside  it  is  stretched  the  corpse  of  a  Jiiger  ;  close  by,  in 
an  enclosure  where  a  shell  has  found  them,  lie  some  thirty 
cavalry  horses  ;  a  little  farther  on  is  laid  out  a  row  of 
German  dead,  for  whom  graves  are  being  dug  by  the 
peasants. 

The  work  of  buriul  falls  to  a  great  extent  on  the 
inhabitants,  who,  with  our  soldiers,  take  no  little  care  in 
marking  the  last  resting-places  of  their  countrymen  and 
their  Allies,  either  by  little  wooden  crosses  or  else  by 
flowers.  Amidst  tVie  graves  scattered  all  over  the 
countryside  are  the  rifle  pits,  trenches  and  gun  emplace- 
ments, which  those  now  resting  below  the  sod  helped  to 
defend  or  to  attack.  From  these  the  progress  of  the 
fighting  can  be  traced,  and  even  its  nature,  for  they  v'ary 
from  carefully  constructed  and  cimningly  jilaced  works 
to  the  hastily  sliapeil  lair  of  a  German  sniper,  or  the 
roadside  ditch,  with  its  sides  scooped  out  by  the  eutronch- 
ing  implements  of  our  infantry. 

The  unfortunate  inliabitants,  too,  had  to 
suffer  from  friends  and  foe  alike.  For  the 
British  had  liad  to  destroy  the  farms  and 
cottages  which  had  sheltered  a  large  number 
of  industrious  families. 

Sir  Horace  Smith-Dorrien,  we  have  seen, 
began  his  advance  towards  Lille  on  October  11. 
But  on  the  10th  the  Germans,  unable  to  break 
their  way  into  the  city,  had  resorted  to  their 
favourite  procedure.  They  bombarded  Lille 
with  their  heavy  artillery.  The  city  had  been 
seized  by  them  in  August  and  a  war  indemnity 
levied  on  it.  It  was  a  flourishing  town  of  over 
200,000  inhabitants  ;  the  fine  public  buildings 
and  the  splendid  Art  INIuseum  bore  witness  to 
its  prosperity,  and  to  the  innate  culture  of  the 


French  which  distinguishes  them  from  most 
industrial  races.  The  Germans  affected  to 
treat  the  French  as  decadent.  A  A^alk  through 
Lille  should  have  dispelled  that  illusion. 

In  1792,  when  the  I'rusiians  and  Austrians 
endeavoured  to  reimpose  the  yoke  of  the 
Bourbon  despotism  on  France,  Lille  had  been 
.vainly  bombarded  by  the  Austrians.  A  bom- 
bardment in  1914  was  not  so  likely  to  be  ineffec- 
tual, for  the  weapons  employed  had  fifty  times 


«.<.  ■ 


AN    INTERRUPTED    GAME    OF    CARDS. 


28 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


LILLE    DURING    THE    BOMBARDMENT. 


the  power  of  those  brought  to  bear  on  the  town 
a  hundred  and  twenty-two  years  before. 

On  October  10  a  small  body  of  German 
cavalry  rode  up  to  the  Town  Hall  and  inquired 
for  the  ]\layor.  AMiile  they  were  demanding 
hostages,  French  horsemen  arrived,  and  the 
Germans,  after  a  brief  encounter,  fled.  At 
5  p.m.  the  bombardment  began,  a  shell  bvirsting 
above  the  Town  Hall.  It  was  the  furst  of 
several.  A  panic  started  and  the  streets  were 
soon  a  seething  mass  of  excited  men  and  women 
flying  for  refuge  to  their  cellars.  A  Taube 
hovered  and  dropped  a  bomb,  which  killed  a  boy 
and  a  horse,  and  injured  a  woman.  At  7  p.m.  the 
bombardment  increased  in  violence  and  several 
houses  in  the  Rue  Nationale  were  destroyed. 

The  night  was  comparatively  calm.  On 
October  11,  from  8  a.m.  to  nightfall  shells 
fell  incessantly.  Numerous  public  buildmgs, 
houses  and  factories  were  on  fire,  and  the 
jDeople  were  flying  in  all  directions.  The  next 
day,  at  6  a.m.,  the  Germans  resumed  their 
work  of  destruction.  Far  off  could  be  hetird 
the  French  artillery  replying  to  the  German 
heavy  guns.  On  the  13th,  as  there  was  no 
hope  of  succour,  to  save  the  city  from  total 
destruction  it  was  surrendered.  Five  or  six 
thovisand  shells  had  been  fired  into  it,  the  Art 


]\Iuseum  was  damaged,  some  quarters  of  the 
city  were  in  flames.  The  Germans,  who  after- 
wards systematically  pillaged  the  to\\"n — 
packing  up  and  dispatching  to  Germany 
furnitLU-e,  Imen,  and  even  clothing — sent  for 
the  fire  engines  of  the  neighbom"ing  places  and 
the  flames  were  finally  subdued.  According 
to  the  official  report  882  buildings,  amongst 
them  some  of  the  finest,  had  been  destroyed 
and  Ij.jOO  damaged,  but  the  loss  of  life  had  been 
small.  The  Mayor,  Bishop  and  Prefect  and 
several  coimcillors  were  taken  as^  hostages. 

A  gentleman  who  was  in  Lille  during  the 
bombardment  and  for  a  week  after  the  Gennan 
occupation  ^^Tites  as  follows  : 

The  two  most  prominent  buildings  in  Lille  were 
untouched  by  the  shells,  but  the  splendid  art  gallery 
had  suffered.  There  were  holes  through  the  roof,  but 
I  do  not  know  what  damage  was  done  to  the  pictures. 
In  the  Rue  de  la  Gare  two  solid  blocks  of  buildings  were 
destroyed,  and  from  the  Place  de  la  Republique  to  the 
Gare  du  Nord  the  buildings  were  terribly  damaged.  The 
Cafe  Joan,  known  to  every  Englishman  and  American 
who  has  visited  Lille,  was  in  ruins. 

The  Germaiis  on  the  entry  behaved  well.  Tliey  were 
apparently  mider  strong  and  admirable  discipline.  They 
set  themselves  at  once  to  put  out  the  fires.  Buildings 
were  dynamited  to  prevent  the  flames  from  spreading. 
The  ordinary  police  were  left  in  charge  of  the  town, 
although  there  were  German  soldiers  stationed  in  all  the 
streets.  The  people  were  told  to  remain  witliin  their 
liouses  with  the  blinds  down.  Civilians  with  arms  in 
their  possession  were  told  that  thev  were  liable  to  be 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


29 


shot  at  once.  Owners  of  motor-cars  were  bidden  to 
report  the-  fact  to  the  authorities.  The  Germans  com- 
mandeered all  the  horses,  motor-cars,  and  bicycles — in 
fact,  every  means  of  transport. 

During  the  bombardment  few  civilians  suffered.  I 
saw  one  civilian  dead  in  the  street.  Among  the  defenders 
was  a  small  party  of  Algerian  troops.  While  they  were 
defending  the  gates  one  man  was  left  in  charge  of  the 
horses,  just  off  the  Rue  de  la  Gare.  A  shell  burst  just 
by  him,  and  I  saw  the  man  and  thirteen  horses  lying  dead 
in  a  heap. 

For  a  week  after  the  German  occupation  I  remained 
in  the  town.  No  attempt  was  made  by  the  Germans  to 
dig  trenches.  I  saw  twenty-five  big  guns  brought  into 
the  city. 

My  papers  were  inspected  by,  the  German  military 
authorities,  who  were  satisfied  of  my  neutrality,  and  I 
left  Lille  and  came  to  England  through  Belgium.  As 
we  passed  through  we  saw  entrenchments  and  barbed 
wire  defences  being  constructed  around  the  towns. 

The  German  soldiers  entered  Lille  accom- 
panied by  bands  playing  their  favourite  music. 
They  were  singing  and  smoking,  but  many 
were  in  a  state  of  complete  exhaustion.  A 
prominent  resident  who  escaped  from  the  city 
stated  that  several  soldiers  lay  down  on  the 
pavements  and  slept  for  hours  and  that  some 
of  the  cavalrymen  could  scarcely  sit  their 
horses.  Later,  regiments  of  white-haired  old 
men,  and  boys  between  the  age  of  16  and  18, 
in  brand  new  uniforms  arrived.  They  had  been 
told  that  France  was  conquered  and  that  they 
were  to  be  reviewed  by  the  Kaiser  in  Paris  ! 

The  feelings  of  some  of  the  Germans  may  be 
surmised  from  the  letter  below  found  on  the 
body  of  a  dead  soldier : 

Perenchies,  near  Lille, 

16th  October    1914. 
Dear    Brother, — Taking    the    opportimity    of    a    five 
hours'  pause,  which  is  the  first  chance  of  writing  I  have 


had,  I  hasten  to  inform  you  of  my  present  position.  On 
the  5th  October  came  the  order  that  the  XlXth  Corps 
should  leave  the  Third  Army  and  form  part  of  the  First 
Army  under  General  Kluck.  The  march  from  St. 
Hillegras  to  Lille,  180  kilometres  (108  miles)  in  five  days 
was  very  exhausting.  In  Lille  hostile  infantry  was 
reported,  and  we  were  engaged  in  street  and  house 
fighting  on  the  13th  and  14th,  and  it  was  only  by  t'.ie 
19th  Heavy  Artillery  that  the  town  was  compelled  to 
surrender.  Lille  has  already  been  taken  by  us  three 
times,  and  if  troops  or  supply  columns  are  attacked  again 
the  place  will  be  razed  to  the  ground.  The  shell  fire, 
although  it  only  lasted  an  hour,  has  cost  the  town  at 
least  a  hundred  buildings.  Here,  also,  in  Lille  the  77th 
Field  Artillery  has  manj'  of  our  comrades  on  its  con- 
science. 

Of  prisoners  we  have  absolutely  none  at  present, 
since  the  wretches  put  on  civilian  clothes,  and  then  one 
can  look  in  vain  for  soldiers.  We  lie  five  miles  from 
Lille  and  are  to  hold  up  the  English  who  have  landed. 
This  will  be  no  light  task,  since  we  are  not  fully  informed 
as  to  their  strength.  It  gives  one  the  impression  that 
the  war  will  last  a  long  time.  Well,  I  shall  hold  out 
even  if  it  goes  on  for  another  year.  In  front  of  us  we 
can  hear  heavy  guns,  so  we  may  easily  have  more 
fighting  to-day.  W^e  have  had  no  post  for  fourteen  days, 
for  the  country  here  is  very  unsafe. 

Thus  Lille — like  Liege,  Namur,  Charleroi, 
Louvain,  Malines,  Brussels,  Antwerp,  Mons, 
Tournai,  Valenciennes,  Maubeuge,  Cambrai, 
Douai,  Rethel,  Mezieres,  Sedan,  Montmedy, 
St.  Quentin,  Laon  —  was  in  the  possession 
of  the  Germans.  The  day  before  (October  12) 
they  had  seized  Ghent  ;  the  day  after  they  were 
to  occupy  Brixges,  and,  on  October  15,  Ostend. 
North  of  the  Lys,  however,  the  tide  of  invasion 
had  tiu'ned.  The  British  IIT.  Corps  and 
Cavalry  Corps  with  d'Urbars  Territorial  Divi- 
sions and  Cavalry  were  driving  the  enemy  from 
Ypres  and  its  vicinity  at  the  very  moment 
Mhen  the  Germans  entered  Lille. 


FRENCH    SEARCHLKJHT 
Thrown  on  attacking  (jermans. 


30 


THE    TIMES    IllSTUliY    OF    THE    WAR. 


The  tuminGT  movement  prepared  by  Joffre 
and  French,  north  and  east  of  the  Aire-Lillo 
Canal,  had  on  the  centre  and  left  been  more 
successful  than  on  the  right.  This  was  due  to 
two  causes.  The  obstacles  had  been  fewer, 
and  less  serious  than  those  encountered  by 
Sniith-Dorrien's  and  Conneau's  Corps ;  the 
enemy  had  been  less  numerous. 

From  the  Lys  to  the  sea  is  a  distance  on  an 
average  of  tMrty  miles.  Wliile  the  population 
of  Lille  was  over  200,000,  that  of  Ypres,  one 
of  the  largest  towns  in  the  inland  portion  of  the 
oblong  Aire-Ghent-Zeebrugge-Calais  was  under 
20,000 — 10,000  less  than  that  of  Armentieres, 
on  the  south  bank  of  the  Lys  to  the  north-west 
of  Lille.  Crossing  the  Lys  one  passed  from  an 
industrial  to  a  rvu-al  neighboiu"hood,  to  villages 
instead  of  towns,  to  farnxliouses  instead  of 
villages.  Except  for  the  liill  on  which  Cassel 
stands  and  for  the  INIont-des-Cats,  and  the  long 
ridge  which  stretches  from  it  eastward,  the 
whole  district  was  either  fiat  or  gently  imdu- 
lating.  Next  to  the  coast  were  reclaimed 
marshes  drained  by  canals  and  dykes.     On  the 


edge  of  the  sea  were  dunes.  Hedges  and 
belts  of  trees  restricted  the  view  ;  the  main 
roads,  though  straight,  were  badly  paved  ; 
the  by-roads  were  winding. 

On  October  11  the  whole  of  the  coast  and 
reclaimed  marshland  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
Allies,  and  the  German  line,  as  already  men- 
tioned, stretched  from  Mont-des-Cats  (south 
of  the  road  from  Cassel  through  Poperinghe 
to  Ypres)  to  Meteren  (on  the  road  from  Cassel 
via  Bailleul  to  Armentieres)  and  thence  to 
Estaires  on  the  Lys.  This  position  could  be 
turned  froin  the  nortli  by  an  advance  of  d'Urbal's 
troops  from  Dunkirk  through  Bergues  and 
Poperinghe  to  Ypres  or  on  the  south  by  Con- 
neau's cavalry  crossing  the  Lys  east  of  Estaires. 
To  the  rear  it  was  threatened  by  the  move- 
ment of  Rawlinson's  Corps  from  Bruges.  By 
the  10th  the  head  of  Byng's  Cavalry  Division 
was  at  Thourout ;  and  on  the  12th  the  6th 
Cavalry  Brigade  held  the  line  Oostnieuwkerke- 
Roulers,  the  7th  that  of  Rumbeke-Iseghem. 

The  aim  of  the  Germans  was  to  remain  on 
the   defensive    vmti]    the    army  released  from 


A    BELGIAN    LOOK  OUT    IN     FLANDERS. 
Finding  Ranges. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


31 


WOUNDED    BRITISH    IN    THE    STATION    AT     BOULOGNE. 


Antwerp,  and  the  reinforcements  which  had 
crossed  the  Scheldt  and  were  now  hurrying 
to  the  Lys,  joined  hands  with  them.  They  took 
every  advantage  of  the  ground,  concealing 
themselves  in  ditches,  woods,  and  villages, 
and  behind  hedges,  and  a  network  of  telephone 
wires  warned  them  of  the  Allied  movements. 
The  line,  however,  they  had  to  defend  was 
longer  than  that  from  Estaires  to  La  Bassee, 
and,  while  the  commander  opposing  Smith- 
Dorrien  and  Conneau  had  one  wing  resting  on 
the  Lys  and  the  forces  from  Estaires  to  Mont- 
des-Cats,  the  other  on  the  Canal  La  Bassee- 
Lille,  the  right  wing  of  the  Germans  north  of 
the  Lys  was  in  the  air,  while  their  left  wing  was 
threatened  by  the  movements  of  Conneau  and 
Smith-Dorrien  south  of  the  Lys. 

The  resistance  of  Lille  was  another  important 
factor  in  the  situation.  Troops  badly  needed 
between  Estaires  and  Mont-des-Cats  had  to  be 
held  back  till  Lille  surrendered.  The  inhabi- 
tants of  Lille  and  the  French  Territorials  there 
have  the  gratification  of  Icnowing  that,  like 
the  Belgians  in  Liege,  they  largely  contributed 
to  the  coming  success  of  the  Allies.  If  LUle 
had  surrendered  on  the  9th,  and  not  on  the 
13th,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  d'Urbal  and 
the  British  would  have  reached  the  canal  from 
Comines  to  Ypres,  and  from  Ypres  to  the  Yser. 

The  misty  and,  occasionally,  rainy  weather 
and    the    hostility    of    the    civilian    pop\ilation 


were  also  to  the  disadvantage  of  the  Germans. 
There  can  be  no  question  that  they  believed 
they  were  being  attacked  by  a  much  larger 
force  than  was  actually  the  case.  The  reports 
of  their  air-scouts  were  defective,  and  the 
Allied  Cavalry,  assisted  by  armoured  motor- 
cars, screened  the  advance  of  the  infantry. 

From  now  onward  the  armoured  motor-car 
began  to  play  an  important  part  in  the  schemes 
of  Joffre  and  French  for  defeating  the  invaders. 
One  of  the  many  examples  of  their  use  is  given 
by  the  British  Eye-witness  : 

On  the  16th  the  crew  of  one  of  our  armoured  motor- 
cars obtained  information  that  a  party  of  hostile  cavalry 
was  in  a  farm.  They  enlisted  help  from  ten  men  of  the 
nearest  battalion,  who  stationed  themselves  on  one  side 
of  the  farm  while  the  motor-car  waited  on  the  other. 
Being  unable  to  bolt  their  quarry,  our  men  carried  fire 
to  the  farm,  which  had  the  desired  effect  and  resulted  in 
two  Uhlans  being  killed  and  eight  captured,  no  cosualtiea 
being  sustained  by  the  attacking  party. 

The  Belgians  showed  special  aptitude  for 
this  kind  of  warfare.  They  "  appeared  to  regard 
Uhlan-himting  as  a  form  of  sport,"  and  often 
ventured  miles  ahead  of  their  own  troops, 
and  seldom  failed  to  return  with  spoils  in  the 
shape  of  helmets,  lances,  and  rifles.  At  the 
opening  of  the  war  the  Germans  had  scored 
heavily  with  their  miniature  forts  on  wheels, 
but  with  every  day  their  superiority  in  the 
mere  machinery  of  war  was  diminishing. 

It  will  be  recollected  tliat  on  October  11 
General  Gough  with  the  2nd  Cavalry  Division 


a2 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GERMANS    ON    THE    DUNES 
Watching  the  Allied  Fleets. 


had  driven  the  German  Cavalry  from  woods 
to  the  north  of  the  Bethune-Aire  Canal,  and 
Unked  up  with  the  Divisional  Cavalry  of  the 
6th  Division  (part  of  the  III.  Corps)  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Hazebrouck.  On  the  11th 
General  Pulteney  had  practically  completed 
the  detrainment  of  that  corps  at  St.  Omer,  and 
moved  it  east  to  Hazebrouck,  in  and  aroimd 
which  town  it  remained  during  the  12th. 

The  same  day  a  Taube  ventvu-ed  over  St. 
Omer  and  dropped  three  bombs  on  the  Rue 
Carnot,  killing  a  laundress  and  a  small  child  in 
her  arms  and  woimding  a  man.  It  was  imme- 
diately pursued  by  five  French  aeroplanes. 
The  "  passenger  "  \\  as  shot  by  the  pursuers  in 
the  head.  The  Taube  swerved,  but  the  pilot 
managed  to  right  it  and  flew  away  at  full  speed. 
Another  shot  struck  the  pilot  and  the  machine 
"  fell  like  a  stone  to  the  ground."  At  Pradelles, 
on  the  road  from  Hazebrouck  to  Bailleul,  a 
German  officer  wished  on  the  12th  to  make 
some  observations  from  the  tower  of  the  church. 
He  applied  to  the  Abbe  Bogaert  for  the  key. 
The  Abbe  could  not  find  it.  He  was  taken  to 
Strazeele,  where  he  was  murdered.  Extra- 
ordinary and  horrible  as  such  incidents  as  the 
above  would  have  seemed  in  July,  in  October 
they  attracted  little  attention. 

On  Tuesday,  the   13th,  the  advanced  guard 


of  the  III.  Corps,  consisting  of  the  19th 
Infantry  Brigade  and  a  Brigade  of  Field 
Artillery,  moved  eastward  to  the  line  St. 
Sylvestre-Caestre-Strazeele    Station.  Three 

miles  out  of  Hazebrouck  the  1st  North  Stafford- 
shire Regiment  came  under  shell  fire  at  7. 30  a.m. 
"  Lost  Private  Ward,"  notes  a  non-com- 
missioned officer,  "  about  two  yards  in  front 
of  me — ^struck  dead  by  a  shell.  He  had  just 
lighted  a  cigarette,  and  said  it  might  be  his 
last."  Through  Strazeele  the  Staff ordshires 
advanced  to  Merris,  south  of  Meteren,  "  where 
we  reniamed  in  position  under  sheU-fire  for 
Ih  hours,  holding  up  the  Bosches."  Merris  a 
few  days  before  had  been  the  scene  of  an  act  of 
atrocious  cruelty.  Uhlans  had  pursued  an  old 
man  to  the  "  Bon  Bovu-geois  "  Inn.  He  had 
hidden  in  an  oak  chest.  Discovered,  he  was 
at  once  shot  with  a  revolver. 

At  St.  Sylvestre  and  Caestre  the  British  were 
on  the  main  road  between  Cassel  and  Bailleul ; 
at  Caestre  they  were  across  the  single  line 
railway  from  Hazebrouck  tlirough  Poperingh© 
to  Ypres  ;  at  Strazeele  Station  they  were  on 
the  double-line  railway  from  Hazebrouck 
through  Bailleul  to  Armentieres  and  LUle.  The 
Germans  held  the  ridge  of  the  Mont-des-Cats 
between  Godewaersvelde  (on  the  railway  from 
Caestre    to    Poperinghe)    and    Bailleul.     They 


THE     TIMES    HlSTOliY     OF     THE     WAR. 


33 


were  in  force  at  Meteren  foui*  miles  or  so  to  the 
east  of  Caestre  and  two  miles  west  of  Bailleul. 
The  Fourth  German  Cavalry  Corps  and  some 
Jaeger  Battalions  were  known  to  be  occupying 
the  neighbourhood  of  Meteren  and  were  believed 
to  be  supported  by  the  advanced  guard  of 
another  German  Army  Corps.  The  high  ridge 
of  the  Mont -des -Cats  extends  eastward  to 
the  road  from  Armentieres  to  Ypres.  It  ends 
round  Wytschaete  and,  south  of  Wytschaete, 
round  Messines. 

Sir  John  French  now  ordered  General  Pul- 
teney  to  push  toward  the  road  between  Armen- 
tieres and  Wytschaete.  The  latter  village  is  four 
miles  south  of  Ypres,  seven  from  Armentieres. 
In  heavy  rain  and  fog  and  through  very  en- 
closed country  the  III.  Corps  marched  for- 
ward. The  artillery  gave  little  assistance 
because  objects  could  not  be  seen  distinctly  ; 
the  roads  and  fields  were  bad  going.  By  night- 
fall, however,  the  British  had  routed  the  enemy 
in  all  directions  and  captured  Meteren,  and 
Oultersteene  to  the  east  of  Merris.  "  We  lost," 
says  the  non-commissioned  officer,  "  another 
seventeen  men  in  taking  Oultersteene.  .  .  . 
Were  not  the  villagers  pleased  to  see  us  !  But 
what  a  toll  !  I  do  not  take  into  account  the 
battalion  or  brigade — only  my  company.  We 
got  two  machine  guns,  a  dead  German  officer, 
with  the  Iron  Cross ;  cycles.  Repaid  our 
losses,"  he  adds,  "With  interest." 

On  account  of  their  deeds  at  ileteren  the 
Medal  for  Distinguished  Conduct  was  awarded 
to  Sergeant  E.  Howard  of  the  1st  Royal 
Lancaster  Regiment,  to  Sergeant  H.  Duckers 
of  the  2nd  Lancashire  Fusiliers,  to  Sergeant 
G.  A.  Hodges  of  the  2nd  Essex  Regiment,  and  to 
Private  C.  Rowley  of  the  1st  Royal  Warwick- 
shire Regiment.  Howard,  at  very  great  risk 
to  himself,  had  crawled  to  12  men  of  his  platoon 
who  had  ceased  firing.  He  found  they  were 
all  dead.  Duckers  had  handled  his  platoon 
with  remarkable  skill,  both  at  Meteren  and  on 
other  occasions.  Hodges,  shot  througii  the 
shoulder,  continued  in  command  of  his  platoon 
and  led  it  forward  to  the  firing  line.  Rowley 
had  volunteered  under  a  heavy  rifle  fire  to  go 
back  from  the  firing  line  to  the  support  trench, 
a  distance  of  some  300  yards,  for  ammunition. 
He  reached  it  and,  later,  recrossed  the  same 
piece  of  ground  under  similar  conditions. 

Meanwhile  General  Gough,  to  the  left  of  the 
III.  Corps,  had  not  been  inactive.  As  had 
been  arranged,  the  Cavah-y  Corps,  after  the 
arrival  of    the  III.   Corps,  had  moved    to    the 


north  of  it.  On  tlio  1 2th  Cough's  Division 
had  ridden  through  Fletre  (between  Caestre  and 
Meteren)  and  on  the  12th-13th  engaged  the 
right  of  the  enemy  at  Mont -des -Cats.  In  this 
action  Prince  Max  of  Hesse  was  mortally 
wounded.  He  lies  buried  in  the  grounds  of  the 
monastery  wliich  crowns  the  hill,  together 
with  three  British  officers  and  some  German 
soldiers.  This  day  a  cavalry  patrol  came  sud- 
denly upon  a  German  machine  gun  detachment. 
The  subaltern  gave  the  order  to  charge  ;  the 
Germans  were  killed  and  scattered  and  the 
gim  captured.  For  his  gallantry  and  deter- 
mination at  Mont-des-Cats  Lieutenant  C.  J. 
Aris  of  the  16th  Lancers  obtained  a  D.S.O. 
He  had  charged  and  driven  off  a  German 
patrol,  and  although  twice  wounded,  persisted 
in  sending  in  his  report  to  liis  squadron  leader. 

It  was  on  the  13th-14th  that  French  and 
British  troops  marched  into  Ypres. 

On  the  14th  tiie  1st  Cavalry  Division  joined 
up  with  the  2nd,  and  the  whole  Cavalry  Corps 
under  General  Allenby  moved  north,  and  in 
face    of     considerable    opposition    seciued    the 


»» 


MORTAR  CAPTURHD    IN   A   GERM.\N 
TRKNCH. 


34 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


high  ground  above  Berthen  round  Westoutre, 
whoso  Mayor,  it  will  be  remembered,  had  been 
lashed  across  the  face  by  a  German  cavalryman. 
Further  to  the  north  the  87th  and  89th  French 
Territorial  Divisions  were  marcliing  from  the 
direction  of  Dunkirk  on  Poperinghe,  Vlamer- 
tinghe  and  Ypres.  The  3rd  Cavalry  Division 
(Byng's)  on  the  13th  had  reconnoitred  towards 
Ypres  and  JNIenin.*  Patrols  had  been  sent 
forward  towards  Comines  and  Wervicq.  At 
Comines — the  birthplace  of  the  historian  Philip 
de  Comines,  who  deserted  Charles  the  Bold 
for  Louis  XI. — the  canal  from  Ypres  enters  the 
Lys.  Both  places  are  on  the  Lys  between 
Menin  and  Armentieres.  The  7th  Infantry 
Division  (Major-General  Capper's)  had  occupied 
Roulers,  menaced  by  the  Germans  from  Thielt, 
and  Sir  Henry  Rawlinson  ordered  B^mg  to  hold 
the  line  Dadizeele-Iseghem.t 

*  The  latter  town  is  on  the  Lys  a  few  miles  west  of 
Courtrai.  It  was  at  Menin  that  Scharnhorst,  the  Hano- 
verian who  reformed  the  Prussian  Army  after  the  Jena 
catastrophe,  had  first  distinguished  himself  in  war. 

t  Roulers  had  a  population  of  over  25,000  ;  on  June  13, 
1794,  the  French  under  Pichegru  and  Macdonald  he. I 
Jiere  defeated  the  Austrians  under  Clerfait.  The  Battle 
of  Roulers  had  been  the  prelude  to  that  of  Fleurus,  the 
first  battle  in  wliich  a  captive  balloon  was  used — by  the 
French — for  military  purooses. 


The  next  day  (October  14)  considerable 
bodies  of  Germans,  believed  to  belong  to  ti  e 
12th  Corps,  were  reported  to  be  moving 
from  the  vicinity  of  Balleul  towards  Wervicq 
and  Menin.  Consequently  Byng,  followed  b\- 
Capper,  was  directed  on  Ypres  with  orders  to 
reconnoitre  to  the  south-west.  At  9  a.m. 
Byng's  Division  v,as  at  Ypres  and  the  6th 
Cavalry  Brigade  proceeded  to  the  line  La 
Clytte-Lindenhock.  Near  Ypres  the  Brigade 
with  rifle  and  revolver  fire  brought  down  a 
Taube.  The  pilot  and  observer  fled  to  the  woods, 
but  were  capttired.  Accompanied  by  armoured 
motor-cars,  the  advance  guard  pushed  on 
towards  Xeuve  Eglise,  killing  and  capturing 
numbers  of  the  retreating  enemy,  No 
"  formed  bodies "  were,  however,  met  with. 
From  the  direction  of  Bailleul  heavy  firing  was 
heard.  At  dusk  the  7th  Cavalry  Brigade 
moved  into  billets  at  Kemmel,  west  of  the 
Ypres -Armentieres  road ;  the  6th  were  at 
Wytschaete  in  touch  with  Cough's  Cavalry 
Division,  with  which  they  had  established  con- 
tact during  the  day.  On  the  15th,  the  day  of  the 
German  entry  into  Ostend,  Byng's  divisionrested. 

As  the  Germans,  issuing  from  Ostend,  Bruges, 
and  Ghent,  might  be  expected  to  advance  on 


MOTOR    FOR    HEAVY    TRANSPORT    WORK. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


35 


GERMAN  CAMP  OUTSIDE  OSTEND. 


Ypres,  Sir  John  French  on  the  16th  placed 
the  3rd  Cavalry  Division  round  Langemarck 
and  Poelcapelle  north-north-east  of  Ypres  and 
south  of  the  Foret  d'Houthulst.  The  Division, 
with  the  7th  Cavalry  Brigade  leading,  moved 
via  Ypres  and  Wieltje  to  the  line  Bixschoote- 
Poelcapelle.  It  was  reported  that  the  enemy 
in  large  nmnbers  were  in  the  Foret  d'Houthulst 
and  Oosfehieuwkerke,  and  a  patrol  of  the  2nd 
Life  Guards  was  obliged  to  withdraw  from 
Staden.  There  was  intermittent  figliting  diu-ing 
the  afternoon,  and  at  dusk  French  troops 
relieved  the  7tli  Cavalry  Brigade,  which  was 
then  billeted  at  Passchendaele,  south-east  of 
Poelcapelle.  The  6th  Cavalry  Brigade  w^as  south 
of  it  at  Nieuwemolen.  The  7th  Infantry 
Division  extended  east  of  Ypres  in  the  wooded 
district  from  Zandvoorde  through  Gheluvelt  to 
Zonnebeke,  south  of  Xieuwemolen.  SujDport- 
ing  Sir  Henry  Rawlinson's  Corps  was  General 
Bidon  W'ith  the  87th  French  Territorial  Division 
in  Ypres  and  'N'^lamertinghe,  and  behind  it, 
on  the  road  to  Dunldrk,  the  89th  French 
Territorial  Division  in  Poperinghe.  Sir  Henry 
Rawlinson  was  to  support  the  Cavalry  Corps 
and  the  III.  Corps  on  the  Lys  if  he  was  not 
attacked  by  the  Germans  advancing  from 
Ghent,  Courtrai,  Bruges,  and  Ostend. 

The  next  day  (October  17)  four  French 
Cavalry  Divisions  under  General  do  Mitry 
deployed  on  Byng's  left  and  drove  the  vanguard 
of  the  Germans  from  Ostend  and  Bruges  out  of 
the  Forot  d'Houthulst. 


The  day  before  the  German  Army  coming 
from  Ostend  had  commenced  its  attack  on  the 
Allies  defending  the  Yser. 

A  glance  at  the  map  will  show  that  on  October 
14  the  Germans,  who  were  originally  on  the 
line  Mont-des-Cats-Meteren-Estaires,  were  in 
imjiiinent  danger  of  being  enveloped  and 
their  retreat  cut.  The  operation  orders  of  the 
6th  Bavarian  Cavalry  Division  which  were 
captured  stated  that,  the  right  of  the  line 
having  been  forced  to  withdraw,  the  left  was 
compelled  to  follow  the  movement. 

While  Rawlinson's  Corps  moved  against  the 
German  rear,  and  while  the  French  Territorial 
Divisions  and  the  Cavalry  Corps  crumpled  up 
the  German  right,  the  III.  Corps  moved  on 
towards  Bailleul,  which  was  entered  at 
10  a.m.  on  October  14,  and  where  many 
\\ounded  Germans  were  captured.  The  town 
had  been  pillaged  ;  a  war-tax  of  £2,000 — paid  by 
the  farmers  of  the  neighbourhood — imposed, 
and  several  houses  burned.  Fourteen  men  of 
military  age  had  been  shot.  There  was  a 
lunatic  asylmn  in  the  town.  With  Teutonic 
liLunour,  the  Germans  turned  the  hundi'ed 
imnates  out  of  doors.  These  poor  creatures 
wandered  about  the  country  and  many  were 
afterwards  found  dead  by  the  roadside  or  in 
the  woods.*  That  night  the  III.  Corps  occupied 
the  line  St.  Jans  Cappel-BaUleul. 


*  See  the  account  givoa  by  a  imtivo  of  Biiilloul  in  tho 
Daily  Chronicle  of  October  20 :  "  Tho  Oormims."  he 
says,  "arc  not  soldiers  so  much  as  brigands  and  assassins.' 


3G 


THE    TIMES     HISTORY    UF    THE    WAR. 


The  advance  was  resumed  on  the  loth  in 
very  foggy  weather.  The  enemy  offered  a 
stubborn  defence.  As  Ypres  and  Wytschaete 
Mere  now  in  the  hands  of  the  Alhes  Sir  John 
French  had  altered  the  direction  of  the  III. 
Corijs.  He  pushed  it  to  the  north  bank  of  the 
Lys  between  Sailly  and  Armentiercs.  It 
will  not  be  forgotten  that  Conneau's  Cavalry 
Corps  Avas  on  the  south  side  of  the  river  in 
the  region  of  Estaires.  By  nightfall  the  6th 
Infantry  Division  was  at  Sailly-Bac  St.  Maur, 
tiie  4th  at  Nieppe  on  the  road  from  Bailleul 
to  Armentieres.  On  the  15th  the  Cavalry 
Corps  had  been  ordered  to  make  for  the  Lys 
below  Armentieres.  There  had  been  an  en- 
counter near  Messines  on  the  14th,  and  Sergeant 
C.  Graham,  of  the  5th  Lancers,  for  engaging 
with  his  revolver  the  enemy  behind  a  barricade 
and,  although  badly  wounded  in  the  hand, 
giving  a  clear  account  of  liis  reconnaissance 
whilst  his  hand  was  being  dressed,  subseqiiently 


!S.-' 


received  the  Medal  for  Distinguished  Conduct. 
At  sunset  all  the  country  on  the  north  bank 
to  some  six  or  seven  miles  below  Armentieres 
(on  the  south  bank)  and  all  the  bridges  above 
it  from  Aire  eastward  were  held  by  the  Allied 
troops,  ^^'arneton,  six  miles  or  so  east  of 
Armentieres^  was  taken  in  the  following 
circumstances : 

At  tne  entrance  to  the  town  the  Germans  had 
constructed  a  high  barricade  loopholed  at  the 
l)ottom  so  that  men  could  fire  through  it 
from  a  lying  position.  A  squadron  of  British 
Cavalry  rode  up  in  the  dark  (October  IG), 
but,  nothing  daunted,  obtained  help  from  the 
artillery,  who  man-handled  a  gun  into  position 
and  blew  the  barricade  to  pieces.  The  cavalry 
then  rode  into  the  middle  of  the  town.  Hardly 
liad  they  reached  the  further  end  of  the  large 
Place,  when  "  one  of  the  buildings  appeared  to 
leap  skj'wards  in  a  sheet  of  flame,  a  shower  of 
star  shells  at  the  same  time  making  the  Place 
liglit  as  day."  The  enemy  from  the  houses 
round  the  Place  fired  on  the  horsemen  from 
rifles  and  macliine-guns.  The  squadron  retired 
with  the  loss  of  an  officer  wounded  and  nine 
men  killed  and  wounded.  Determined  not  to 
leave  the  wounded  to  the  mercy  of  the  dervishes 
of  Central  Eiurope,  some  troopers  took  off  their 
boots,  went  back  into  the  Place  and  succeeded 
in  carrying  away  their  bleeding  comrades. 
W'arneton  was  captui-ed,  but  the  bridge  had 
been  destroved. 


AN    ADVANCED    POST. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY  •  OF    THE    WAR. 


37 


Armciitieres  lies  to  the  south  of  the  Lys.  A 
bridge  connects  it  with  Nieppe.  After  a  few 
shells  had  been  fired  at  the  barricade  on  the 
bridge  the  Germans  evacuated  Armentieres 
(October  16),  leaving  behind  them  fifty  wounded, 
rifles,  ammunition,  and  a  motor-car.  The  river- 
line,  almost  as  far  east  as  Frelinghien,  was  in 
British  or  French  hands.  Ai'mentieres  had 
been  systematically  plundered.  The  members 
of  the  INIvmicipal  Council  and  prominent 
factory  owners  had  been  arrested  and  held  as 
hostages.  The  inhabitants,  it  need  scarcely 
be  said,  welcomed  with  joy  the  British  troops. 

From  the  condition  of  the  bridges  over  the 
Lys  it  is  clear  that  the  Germans  had  been 
completely  surprised  by  tlie  rapid  offensive 
of  the  Allies.  At  Warneton  the  damaged 
bridge  was  being  repaired ;  at  Frelinghien 
the  bridge  had  not  been  demolished  and 
was  defended  ;  further  west,  at  Houplines,  the 
bridge  was  destroyed,  but  at  Nieppe  both  the 
rocid  bridge  and  railway  bridge  leading  to 
Annentieres  were  only  barricaded,  and  the 
bridge  at  Erquinghem,  west  of  Armentieres, 
was  neither  defended  nor  broken.  The  Lys 
in  this  part  of  its  course  flows  through  a  slight 
depression  in  the  plain.  It  is  from  45  ft.  to 
7.5  ft.  wide,  and  only  6  ft.  deep.  At  places  it 
had  been  canalized.  Many  of  the  bridges 
were  of  the  draw  or  swing  type. 

Accordingly,  on  the  17th,  when  Smith- 
Dorrien's  Corps — the  right  wing  of  the  Allied 
Forces  engaged  in  the  battle  between  La 
Bassee  and  Nieuport — had  ended  its  offensive 
and  the  Germans  from  Ostend  and  Bruges  had 
already*  begun  their  attempt  to  break  through 
the  left  wing  on  the  Yser  between  the  sea  and 
Di.xmude,  the  3rd  Corps  (General  Pulteney's) 
had  crossed  the  Lys  and  occupied  Arinentieres. 
"  Took  up  outposts,"  writes  a  non-com- 
missioned officer  of  the  1st  North  Staffordshires, 
"  near  Armentieres  at  Wez  Macquart  and 
dug  ourselves  in."  Both  banks  of  the  Lys  up 
to  Frelinghien  were  held  by  the  Allies.  To  the 
north  of  the  Lys  the  Cavalry  Corps  had  taken 
Warneton  and  were  reconnoitring  towards 
Alenin.  "  With  a  view  to  a  further  advance 
east,"  wrote  Sir  John  French  in  his  dispatch  of 
November  20,  1914,  "  I  ordered  General 
Allenby,  on  the  15th,  to  reconnoitre  the  line 
of  the  River  Lys,  and  endeavour  to  secure  the 
passages  on  the  opposite  bank,  pending  the 
arrival  of  the  III.  and  IV.  Corps."  From 
the   15th  to  the   I'Jth  this  reconnaissance  was 

*  The  Battle  of  the  Yser  bogau  on  Octol)cr  16. 


LOADING    AN    18-pr.   GUN. 

most  skilfully  and  energetically  carried  out, 
but,  although  valuable  information  was  gained 
and  strong  forces  of  the  enemy  held  in  check, 
the  Cavalry  Corps  was  unable  to  secure  pas- 
sages or  to  establish  a  permanent  footing  on  the 
southern  bank  of  the  river.  On  the  17th  the 
III.  Corps  (Pulteney's)  was  on  the  line  Bois 
Grenier-Le  Gheir.  The  enemy  were  holding  a 
line  from  Radinghem  through  Perenchies  to 
Frelinghien  and  thence  along  the  south  bank  of 
the  Lys  as  far  as  the  crossing  at  Wervicq. 

On  the  18th  Sir  John,  trusting  to  the  Belgians 
and  French  to  maintain  the  line  of  the  Yser, 
and  to  the  Cavalry  of  de  Mitry  and  the  Terri- 
torials of  Bidon  to  stop  any  German  advance 
on  Ypres  through  or  past  the  Foret  d'Houthulst, 
ordered  up  Sir  Henry  Rawlinson's  Corps — i.e.. 
Capper's  Infantry  and  Byng's  Cavalry  Divi- 
sions— to  the  support  of  the  Cavalry  Corps. 
The  7th  Infantry  Division  (Capper's)  was  to 
drive  the  Germans  from  Menin  on  the  north 
bank  of  the  Lys  between  Warneton  and  Courtrai. 
"  I  considered,"  says  Sir  John,  "  that  the  pos- 
session of  Menin  constituted  a  very  important 
point  of  passage,  and  would  much  facilitate  the 
advance  of  the  rest  of  the  Ai-my."  Sir  John 
still  hoped  that  the  offensive  of  the  Allies  might 
be  continued.  The  left  of  Capper's  Division 
was  to  be  supported  by  Byng's  Cavalry  and 
by  the  French  Cavalry  operating  on  the  ea,st 
of  the  Foret  d'Houthulst  in  the  neighbourliood 
of  Roulers.     Sii'  Hemy  Rawlinson  reprosentod 


:i8 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAU. 


A    GERMAN    RANGE     FINDER. 

to  Sir  John  French  that  large  hostile  forces  were 
advancing  upon  him  from  the  east  and  north- 
east and  that  his  left  flank  was  severely 
threatened,  but  Sir  John,  now  that  the  I.  Corps 
(Sir  Douglas  Haig's)  was  detraining  at  St.  Omer, 
decided  that  Rawlinson's  Corps  should  run  the 
risk  of  an  attack  of  the  Germans  on  his  flank. 

The  following  account  by  a  Flemish  gentle- 
man of  the  fighting  roimd  Roulers  to  the  North- 
east of  Ypres  on  October  18  and  19  will  help 
to  explain  Sir  H.  Rawlinson's  objections  to 
Sir  John  French's  plan  : — 

About  the  middle  of  this  month  thousands  of  German 
soldiers  appeared  in  Roulers.  On  the  doors  of  the  houses 
they  chalked  the  nimiber  of  men  to  be  billeted  under 
each  roof.  The  requisitions  were  numerous^-carriages, 
barrows,  horses,  cycles,  hay,  oats,  etc.  Everything  had 
to  be  supplied  so  quickly  that  the  invaders  had  no  time 
to  give  coupons.  But  as  a  reward  they  chalked  here  and 
there  on  a  house  the  words  "  Good  people." 

On  October  17  the  German  troops  marched  ofi  in  the 
direction  of  Dixmude,  towards  the  coast,  to  strengthen 
the  (Jerman  forces  between  Ostend  and  Nieuport.  A 
hundred  men  remained  in  occupation  of  Roulers.  Early 
next  morning,  Sunday,  the  cry  was  heard  along  the  road 
to  Dixmude,  "  The  French  are  here  !  "  Seventeen  French- 
men appeared  from  the  direction  of  Ypres  and  two  hours 
later  200  French  dragoons  followed  them.  They  con- 
cealed themselves  in  a  little  wood.  The  hundi'ed  Ger- 
mans in  the  town  got  to  know  their  whereabouts,  perhaps 
through  spies.  A  skirmish  occurred  in  the  little  wood, 
and  at  3  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  only  40  survivors  of 
the  German  troops  went  back  to  the  town. 

The  same  evening  many  French  troops  marched  into 
the  town,  and  more  arrived  during  the  night.  They 
built  in  the  market-place  and  the  streets  barricades  of 
mattresses,  sacks,  and  barrels.  Mitrailleuses  were 
stationed  behind  pillar-boxes  and  in  the  porches  of  corner 
houses.  Guns  were  placed  in  position  at  one  of  the 
approaches  to  the  town. 


The  next  morning,  Monday,  many  Genm  n  tro  ip- 
appeared  from  the  direction  of  Bruges  and  Ghent,  i'hey 
placed  I  heir  guns  in  three  villages,  Hooglede,  Ardoye, 
and  Iseghem.  At  Hooglede  they  had  a  .specially  good 
position,  on  the  ridge  of  a  hill,  which  runs  straight 
through  West  Flanders.  The  Flemish  people  say  that 
the  threshold  of  the  church  of  Hooglede  lies  as  high  as 
the  top  of  the  tower  of  Roulers,  which  is  about  245  feet 
high. 

The  Germans  placed  their  guns  in  front  of  the  church 
of  Hooglede,  whence  they  saw  Roulers  lying  below  them. 
The  French  artillery  began  the  action,  but  the  Germans 
for  a  time  did  not  answer.  The  clock  of  Roulers  had 
struck  12  before  they  opened  lire,  and  it  rained  ;-hells 
on  the  town.  Its  population  escaped  into  the  cellar-^, 
anxiously  awaiting  the  fate  of  their  beloved  town.  The 
bombardment  went  on.  Roofs  fell  in,  walls  reeled. 
The  tower  of  the  church  of  Notre  Dame  leaned  over. 
A  shell  fell  through  the  roof  of  St.  Michael's  Church  and 
did  much  damage.     Flames  went  up  on  several  sides. 

In  the  meantime  German  infantry  tried  to  approach 
the  town.  Their  advanced  troops  fortified  themselves 
in  railway  carriages  at  the  shunting  station  on  the  line 
Beveren-Roulers,  but  the  French  artillery  on  the  Dix- 
mude road  shelled  and  destroyed  the  carriages.  More 
troops  were  brought  up  and,  towards  evening,  the 
Germans  succeeded  in  forcing  their  way  into  the  town. 
The  fight  was  continued  in  the  streets,  but  the  French 
were  obliged  to  retire.  They  fell  back  in  good  order,  with 
all  their  guns,  and  took  up  new  positions  at  East  Nieu- 
kerke,  about  three  miles  to  the  south-west. 

Night  came,  and  from  afar  one  could  see  the  fierce 
glow  of  burning  Roulers.  That  night,  however,  the 
British  advanced  from  Ypres  and  camped  near  Moors- 
lede,  with  the  French  lying  near  the  old  battlefield  of 
Roozeheke. 

At  the  same  time  as  Rawlinson's  movement 
on  Menin  the  III.  Corps  was  to  move  down  the 
south  bank  of  the  Lys  from  Armentieres  to 
assist  the  Cavalry  Corps  to  cross  to  the  right 
bank.  To  do  this,  the  enomy  between  the 
III.  Corps  and  Lille  had  first  to  be  vigorously 
pushed  back.  On  the  night  of  the  17th  the 
III.  Corps  and  Cavalry  Corps  were  being  opposed 
by  the  19th  Saxon  Corps,  released  from  Lille 
after  its  capture,  by  at  least  one  division  of 
the  7th  Corps,  and  by  tliree  or  four  divisions  of 
cavalry.  Reinforcements  for  the  enemy  were 
known  to  be  coming  up  from  the  direction  of  Lille. 

Despite  the  odds  against  hun,  Pultenej'^ 
attacked  on  the  18th,  but  he  made  little  pro- 
gress. At  nightfall  his  6th  Division  had  taken 
Radinghem  and  was  holding  Radinghem,  La 
Valine,  Ennetieres,  Capinghem,  and  a  point 
300  yards  east  of  Halte.  A  wounded  soldier 
described  the  attack  of  Ennetieres  to  a  Times 
correspondent : 

The  advance  began  early  yesterday  morning.  The 
enemy  was  driven  out  by  shell  fire.  They  retired  towards 
Lille  and  shelled  the  village  in  their  turn.  Not  a  habit- 
able house  was  left  standing.  The  Allied  troops 
advanced  round  the  village  under  a  terrible  fire,  talcing 
cover  under  the  walls  of  factory  buildings.  The  enemy 
had  taken  the  range  of  the  buildings.  Their  fire  was 
accurate.  An  officer  with  two  companions  mounted  to 
the  roof  of  a  factory  to  make  observations.  A  shrapnel 
shell  burst  on  them  at  once,  and  all  three  were  killed. 
In  the  village  500  German  dead  were  found.     The  cart- 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE    WAR. 


39 


lidges  foiuid  upon  them  wero  of  the  old  Snider  type 
\<nt]i  large  lead  bullets,  some  flattened  at  the  top.  I 
have  seen  two  of  them.  Infantry  succeeded  in  entrench- 
ing themselves  on  the  farther  side  of  the  village.  But 
their  trenches  were  not  more  than  two  feet  deep,  and  they 
had  to  lie  full  length  in  them.  It  was  here  in  the  trenches 
that  my  informant  was  wounded.  A  shrapnel  struck  the 
pile  of  earth  in  front  of  him,  and  a  bullet  from  the  bur-ting 
ghell  hit  liim  on  the  head  It  was  a  glancing  shot,  which 
inflicted  a  severe  scalp  wound.  Just  previously  he  had 
seen  a  shrapnel  shell  burst  immediately  over  the  heads  of 
six  men.  "  They  arc  gone,"  he  thought.  But  when  the 
smoke  had  cleared  away  all  six  rose  from  the  ground, 
luiscathed. 

It  is  clear  that  in  the  operations  of  the  past  week  our 
troops  have  gained  much  ground.  They  are  now,  how- 
ever, coming  into  touch  with  the  main  German  position 
at  Lille.  Our  men  are  now  "  digging  themselves  in  " 
to  hold  their  ground  until  the  necessary  reinforcements 
can  reach  them. 

The  1st  North  Staff ordsliires  were  engaged 
roiind  Wez  Macquart.  A  non-commissioned 
officer  mentions  that  a  Roman  CathoUc  Father 
gave  his  chiim  and  him  a  bottle  of  wine  at 
J  0.30  p.m.,  which  gave  them  sleep.  "  iNIay  God 
bless  him  for  it,"  he  observes. 

The  4th  Division  held  the  line  from 
L'Epinette  to  the  Lys  at  a  point  400  yards 
south  of  Frehnghien  and  thence  to  a  point  on 
the  Lys  half  a  mile  south-east  of  Le  Gheir. 
The  Corps  Reserve  was  at  Armentieres  station, 
with  its  right  flank  in  touch  with  Conneau's 
Cavalry  Corps.     South-west,  at  Aubers,  began 


the  left  wing  of  Smith-Dorrien's  force,  which 
dui'ing  the  18th  was  violently  but  unsuccess- 
fully attacked  by  the  Germarus  between  Lille 
and  La  Bassee.  Tlie  left  of  Pulteney's  Reserve 
joined  hands  with  the  Cavalry  Corps,  and, 
beyond  the  Cavalry  Corps  on  the  north  bank  of 
the  Lys,  the  7th  Infantry  Division  was  advanc- 
ing on  Meuin. 

On  October  19  Sir  H.  Rawlinson — with 
Byng's  Cavalry  Division  on  his  left — tried  to 
carry  out  Sir  John  French's  orders  to  drive  the 
enemy  through  Menin,  but  the  task  was  beyond 
his  power.  His  Corps  (the  IV.)  was  worn  out  by 
constant  marching  and  fighting,  and  the  Ger- 
mans were  in  overwhelming  force.  By  10  a.m. 
the  7th  Cavalry  Brigade,  attacked  by  bodies  of 
the  enemy  from  Roulers,  which  had  been 
occupied  by  the  Germans,  fell  back  three- 
quarters  ot  a  mile  to  a  strong  position.  "  K  " 
Battery  of  the  Royal  Horse  Artillery,  which  had 
been  attached  to  the  Brigade,  came  into  action 
north  of  IMoorslede  and  rendered  great  assist- 
ance. The  6tli  Cavalry  Brigade,  with  "  C " 
Battery,  advanced  from  So.  Pieter  and,  after 
a  brisk  little  action  captured  Ledegehem  and 
RoUeghemcappelle.  But  the  enemy  from 
Roulers  continued  to  press  on,  and  the  7th 
Cavalry   Brigade   was   withdrawTi  to   the  high 


BRITISH    MOTOR-AMBULANCE    WRECKED    BY    GERMAN    FIRE. 


40 


THl-:     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


ground  east  of  Moorslede.  This  exposed  the 
ihnik  of  the  (itli  Cavalry  Brigade  and,  as  large 
hostile  forces  were  reported  advancing  from 
Courtrai,  it  was  ordered  to  fall  back  gratlually 
on  ^loorslede  and  thence  to  withdraw  to 
billots  at  Poelcapelle.  Its  retirement  was 
covered  by  the  7th  Brigade,  which,  under  heavy 
shell  fire,  retreated  to  Zonnebeke.  The  French 
took  over  Passchendaele,  north  of  Zonnebeke. 

The  pressm-e  of  the  Germans  on  BjTig  had 
decided  Sir  Henry  RawlLnson  not  to  attack 
Menin.  "  He  probably  exercised  a  wise  judg- 
ment," says  Sir  Jolm  French,  "  in  not  com- 
mittmg  his  troops  to  tliis  attack  in  their  some- 
what weakened  condition  ;  but  the  result  w  a^ 
that  the  enemy's  continued  possession  of  the 
passage  at  Menin  certainly  facilitated  liis 
rapid  reinforcement  of  liis  troops,  and  thu?' 
rendered  any  further  advance  impracticable." 
Tlu-ough  Menin  ran  the  railway  from  Lille  to 
Roulers,  and  one  from  Courtrai. 

The  1.  Corps  (Sir  Douglas  Haig's)  had  com- 
pleted its  detrainment  on  the  19th  and  was  con- 
centrated between  St.  Omer  and  Hazebrouck. 
"  A  question  of  vital  importance,"  writes  Sir 
John  French,  "now  arose  for  decision."  To 
which  point  of  the  line  of  battle  should  the 
I.  Corps  be  dispatched  "?  The  enemy  on  the 
Lys,  it  was  apparent,  were  in  very  superior 
nmnbers,  and  the  II.,  III.,  IV.  and  the  Cavalry 
Corps  were  holding  a  much  A\ider  front  than 
their  strength  w  arranted.  Should  the  I.  Corps 
his  sent  to  the  line  of  the  Lys  ?  The  objection 
was  that  the  German  3rd  Reserve  Corps  and 
at  least  one  Landwehr  Division  were  Icno^v^^  to 
be  operating  in  the  region  north  and  east  of 
Ypres,  and  that  the  enemy  were  bringing  up 
large  reinforcements  from  the  east,  which  for 
several  days  could  only  be  opposed  by  two  or 
three  French  Cavalry  Divisions,  the  two 
Territorial  Divisions  and  the  Belgian  Army, 
which  was  badly  in  need  of  a  rest  after  its 
heroic  exertions.  Unless  some  substantial 
resistance  could  be  offered  on  the  Yser  and 
between  the  Yser  and  Ypres  the  Allied  flank 


would  be  turned  and  the  Channel  Ports  laid 
bare  to  the  enemy.  "  I  judged,"  says  Sir 
John,  "  that  a  successful  movement  of  this 
kind  fon  the  part  of  the  Germans]  would  be 
fraught  with  such  disastrous  consequences  that 
the  risk  of  [the  II.,  III.,  IV.  and  Cavalry 
Corps]  operating  on  so  extended  a  front  must 
be  undertaken." 

On  the  evening  of  the  19th  Sir  Jolm  had  a 
personal  interview  with  Sir  Douglas  Haig,  and 
the  latter  was  instructed  to  advance  with  the 
I.  Corps  through  Ypres  to  Thourout.  His 
immediate  objective  was  to  be  the  capture  of 
Bruges.  If  Bruges  were  taken  the  communi- 
cations of  the  Germans  attacking  the  line  of  the 
Yser  would  be  cut.  When  Bruges  was  cajitured 
Sir  Douglas  was,  if  possible,  to  drive  the  enem\- 
towai'ds  Ghent.  But  it  was  left  to  him  to 
decide  after  he  had  traversed  Ypres  whether 
he  would  move  on  Bruges  or  towards  the  Lys. 
Sir  John  had  arranged  for  de  ilitry's  Cavalr_\- 
to  operate  on  the  left,  and  Bj-ng's  Cavalry 
Division  on  the  right  of  the  1st  Corps.  The 
7th  Infantry  Division  (Capper's)  was  to  "  con- 
form generally  "  to  the  movements  of  the  1. 
Corps,  iis  for  the  Cavalry  Corps  and  the  III. 
and  II.  Corps  on  the  north  and  south  bank'^  of 
the  Lys,  they  were  to  remain  on  the  defensive. 
The  forces  which  the  enemy  had  accumulated 
on  their  front  precluded  ai^}'  other  course.  The 
Lahore  Division  of  the  Indian  Expeditionary 
Force  was  arrivmg  in  its  concentration  area  in 
rear  of  the  II.  Corps  on  October  19  and  20. 

The  I.  Corps  on  October  20  reached  a  line 
from  Elverdinghe  to  the  cross-roads  one-and-a- 
half  miles  north-west  of  Zonnebeke.  Why 
Sir  Douglas  Haig  w  as  unable  to  carry  out  Sii- 
John's  plan  for  the  capture  of  Bruges  will  be 
described  in  a  subsequent  number.  The 
Battle  of  Ypres  was  about  to  begin  ;  the  Battle 
of  the  Yser  had  been  in  progress  for  foxir  days. 
The  reader  must  not  forget  that  during  the 
fighting  from  La  Ba.ssee  to  Nieuport  the  Battles 
of  Arras  and  Roye-Peronne  continued  to  the 
south  along  a  Une  of  about  100  miles 


CHAPTER   XLIX. 


THE  INTERVENTION  OF  TURKEY, 


Turkey  and  Greece — The  Crtsts  in  1914 — German  Policy  at  Constantinoplk — Great 
Britain  and  Turkish  Ships — Goeben  and  Breslau  in  the  Dardanelles — Grand  Vizier's 
Promises  of  Neutrality — Diplomatic  Negotiations — Abolition  of  the  Capitulations — 
Germany  Forces  War — Entente  Ambassadors  Leave  Turkey. 


WHEN  the  European  crisis  gi-ew  to  a 
head  in  the  closing  days  of  July, 
1914,  it  obscured  a  minor,  but  very 
acute,  crisis  between  Turkey  and  Greece,  which 
seemed  to  mean  that  we  were  on  the  eve  of  a 
war  between  those  two  countries.  There  had 
been  a  series  of  shameless  persecutions  of  Greek 
Christians  in  Asia  Minor,  and  there  still 
remained  as  a  legacy  from  the  war  of  the 
Balkan  Allies  against  Turkey  the  question  of  the 
future  ownership  of  the  islands  of  the  Dode- 
canese. The  dispute  was  further  aggravated 
by  a  contest  for  naval  supremacy.  Turkey 
had  ordered  two  battleships  in  England,  which 
were  expected  to  be  ready  for  delivery  in  the 
autumn,  but  Greece  had  retaliated,  and  fore- 
stalled her  rival,  by  the  purchase  of  two 
cruisers  from  the  United  States  Government, 
which  were  expected  to  reach  Greek  waters 
at  the  end  of  July.  Both  countries  had  British 
naval  missions  hard  at  work,  increasing  the 
efficiency  of  their  fleets,  and  it  was  obvious 
that  if  war  were  declared  in  the  summer  the 
arrival  of  the  American  cruisers  would  give  the 
advantage  in  the  Aegean  Sea  to  Greece,  while 
if  Turkey  protracted  the  crisis  until  the  delivery 
of  the  British-built  Dreadnoughts  a  superiority, 
at  least  in  tonnage  and  in  guns,  woukl  rest  with 
Vol.  JIT.— Part  28. 


Turkey.  M.  Venezelos,  who  always  showed 
high  qualities  of  moderation  and  statesmanship, 
made  a  final  and,  as  it  was  then  believed, 
despairing  attempt  to  compose  the  quarrel. 
A  meeting  was  arranged  to  take  place  at 
Brussels  between  M.  Venezelos  and  Prince 
Said  Halim  Pasha,  the  Turkish  Grand  Vizier. 
M.  Venezelos  duly  left  Athens  for  Brussels,  and 
proceeding  up  the  Adriatic  to  Trieste  reached 
Munich.  The  Grand  Vizier,  however,  who  was 
to  have  left  Constantinople  at  the  same  time,  \\  as 
so  much  impressed  by  the  growing  gravity  of  the 
crisis  that  he  failed  to  keep  his  engagement, 
and  did  not  leave  Constantinople.  By  the 
time  M.  Venezelos  had  reached  IMunich  the 
Austrian  Ultimatum  to  Serbia  had  been 
launched.  Europe  was  on  the  eve  of  wai-. 
and  the  railways  in  Austria  and  Serbia  were 
already  in  the  hands  of  the  military  authorities. 
Greater  evils  drive  out  loss,  and  not  the  least 
astounding  result  of  the  outbreak  of  the  groat 
war  in  Europe  was  the  fact  that  the  minor 
danger  of  war  between  Greece  and  Turk(\\- 
disappeared  for  a  time.  Yet  neither  country 
could  be  indifferent  to  the  great  conflagration, 
and  here,  too,  as  might  have  been  ex]jfcted,  their 
sympathies  were  on  opposite  sides,  Turkey 
had  for  years  past  been  to  all  intents  and  pur- 


41 


42 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


THE    SULTAN 
Leaving  the  Mosque  after  the  declaration  of  war. 

poses  a  member  of  the  Triple  Alliance,  and  if 
not  a  very  effective  partner  she  had  in  hei' 
sjTnpathies  been  a  much  more  real  ally  of 
Germany  and  Austria  than  had  Italy — the 
nominal  third  member  of  the  Triple  Alliance. 
It  IS  true  that  there  was  somewhat  of  a  diplo- 
matic tangle.  With  Italy  Turkey  was  at  war 
from  1911  to  1912,  and  with  Austrian  diplomacy 
also  she  had  had  stormy  passages  in  recent 
years,  notably  after  the  Young  Turk  Revolution 
when  the  Dual  Monarchy  in  October,  1908, 
suddenly  declared  the  annexation  of  the 
already  occupied  provinces  of  Bosnia  and 
Herzegovina,  but  with  Germany,  since  the 
advent  of  William  II.  to  the  throne,  she  had 
increasingly  intimate  relations.  Bismarck  may 
have  declared  that  the  Eastern  Question  was 
not  worth  the  bones  of  a  Pomeranian  grenadier, 
but  in  this  domain  as  in  others  Bismarck's 
politics  were  entirely  discarded  in  modern 
Prussia.  It  had  been  long  decided  that  Ger- 
many was  to  be  Turkey's  patron.  In  the  days 
of  Abdul  Hamid's  tj-ranny  it  was  a  simple 
matter  to  buy  the  Palace  clique  at  Yildiz  Kiosk, 
and  by  this  means  she  had  begun  the  policy 
of  securing  political  and  commercial  ascendancy, 
of  advancing  her  trade  interests,  and  of  exploit- 
ing the  great  mineral  wealth  of  the  Empire. 
The  Kaiser  himself  went  to  Constantinople 
and    visited   Palestine,    for   it   was    to    Asiatic 


Turkey  that  Germany's  longing  eyes  were 
turned.  "  Peaceful  penetration "  was  her 
method,  and  with  the  ever  pecuniarily 
embarrassed  Turk  she  found  many  oppor- 
tunities of  strengthening  her  hold  in  his  country. 
To  build  and  own  his  railways,  to  be  his  banker, 
to  teach  his  soldiers  drill,  to  sell  him  Kriipj) 
guns,  and  to  dominate  his  dii)lomacy,  wore  the 
objects  which  she  pursued,  in  the  hope  that 
one  day,  either  by  some  dramatic  turn  of  events 
or  gradually  and  almost  imperceptibly,  the 
Sultan's  sceptre  in  Asia  would  pass  from  the 
feeble  Oriental  grasp  into  her  own  firm  hands. 
The  advent  to  po%%er  of  the  Young  Turks  in 
1908  temporarily  checked  the  march  of  German 
influence  at  Constantinople,  and  the  friends  of 
Abdul  Hamid  were  out  of  comt.  But  Germany 
had  the  good  fortune  to  be  represented  at 
Constantinople  by  Baron  IMarschall  von  Bieber- 
stein,  a  singularly  able  diplomatist,  who  rapidly 
gained  the  confidence  of  the  new  party,  and 
cleverly  represented  to  it  that  whether  Old 
Turks  or  Young  Turks  were  in  power  the 
interests  of  the  Empire  in  its  relations  with 
foreign  Powers  remained  precisely  the  same, 
and  that,  whatever  might  have  been  the  defects 
of  Abdul  Hamid's  internal  adminLstration,  his 
foreign  policy  had  been  conducted  with  real 
regard  to   the  safety  of   his   country.     Yet  it 


THE    GROWN    PRINCE    OF    TURKEY 

(centre). 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


43 


CONSTANTINOPLE, 
Showing  the  Golden  Horn  and  Stambul. 


might  have  been  apparent  that  this  was  pre- 
cisely the  reverse  of  the  truth.  For  Abdul 
Hamid,  in  his  long  years  of  feeble  tyrannj', 
had  not  only  brought  Turkey  to  the  direst 
straits  internally  but  had  greatly  imperilled 
her  international  position,  exposed  her  to  a 
long  series  of  humiliations  and  severely  tried 
and  chilled  the  once  wann  and  well  tried 
friendship  of  Great  Britain  and  France,  the 
two  naval  Mediterranean  Powers  which  held 
Turkey  in  the  hollow  of  their  hands. 

The  Aiistrian  annexation  of  Bosnia  and 
the  Italian  declaration  of  war  against  Turkey 
placed  Germany  in  an  exceedingly  difficult 
position,  but  she  managed  to  maintain  her 
influence  at  Constantinople  through  these 
trying  periods.  Then  came  Turkey's  disastrous 
war  with  the  Balkan  Allies,  in  which  Germany's 
sympathies  were  on  the  side  of  Turkey,  though 
German  friendship  was  confined  entirely  to 
good  wishes  and  Turkey  was  left  to  stomach 


her  defeats  as  best  she  iniglit.  There  follo\M'd 
the  war  between  Bulgaria  and  her  former 
Allies,  Serbia  and  Greece,  and  when^  at  its 
conclusion,  the  Treaty  of  Bukarest  was  made, 
the  German  Emperor  busied  himself  to  secure 
the  retention  of  Adrianople  by  Turkey.  Doubt  - 
less  he  and  the  German  General  Staff  had  been 
sadly  disillusioned  as  to  the  military  capabilities 
of  their  friends,  but  they  were  still  determined 
to  continue  their  old  programme  of  exploiting 
Turkey,  and  they  had  a  definite  plan  for 
dragging  her  into  the  European  conflict  whicli 
was   not   far   distant. 

When  at  last  the  Great  War  broke  out  it 
became  evident  that  Turkish  neutrality  was 
not  likely  to  endure  for  long.  Complications, 
also,  very  soon  sprang  up.  On  August  3 
Sir  Edward  Grey  instructed  I\Ir.  Beaumont, 
the  British  charg6  d'affaires,  to  inform  the 
Turkish  Goveriunent  that  Great  Britain  do- 
sired    to    take    over    the    Tiu-kish    battlecship, 


44 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


THE    bHElJvH-LL.lSLAM    PROCLAIMING    A    HOLY    WAR. 


Sultan  Osman,  then  under  construction  by 
Messrs.  Armstrong,  Wliitworth,  and  Co.  The 
.  Grand  Vizier  gave  an  assiu-ance  that  Turkey 
intended  to  observe  .a  strict  neutrality,  and 
explained  that  the  Turkish  mobilization,  already 
begun,  had  been  ordered  only  because  it  would 
take  months  to  complete,  and  because  the 
Government  wished  not  to  be  taken  by  surprise 
in  case  of  any  aggression.  Sir  Edward  Grey 
replied  by  expressing  his  conviction  that  the 
Turkish  Government  would  understand  the 
necessity  for  Great  Britain  to  keep  in  England 
all  warships  available  for  England's  own  use,  and 
gave  an  assiu-ance  that  all  financial  and  other 
loss  to  Turkey  would  receive  due  consideration. 
Fiu-ther,  he  added  that  if  Tiu-kex-  remained 
neutral  no  alteration  would  be  made  in  the 
status  of  Egypt. 

Germany,  however,  rapidly  thickened  the 
plot.  At  8.30  p.m.  on  August  10  the  German 
warships  Goeben  and  Breslau  reached  the 
Dardanelles.  It  was  the  duty  of  Tiu-key.  as 
a  neutral  Power,  to  see  that  they  did  not  pa.ss 
through,  and  that  they  should  either  leave 
before  twenty-four  hoiu^,  or  be  disarmed  and 
laid  up.  The  next  day  the  world  was  astonished 
by  the  news  that  the  Ottoman  Government  had 
bought  the  Goeben  and  Breslau.      The  Grand 


Vizier  informed  the  British  charge  d'affaires 
that  the  piurchase  was  due  to  Great  Britain's 
detention  of  the  battleship  Sultan  Osman. 
Turkey,  he  said,  must  have  a  shjp  to  bargain 
with  in  regard  to  the  question  of  the  Islands 
on  equal  terms  with  Greece,  and  he  declared 
that  the  purchase  was  not  due  to  any  intention 
to  make  war  upon  Russia.  At  the  same  time 
he  asked  that  the  British  Naval  Mission  might 
be  allowed  to  remain.  To  tlus  request  Sir 
Edward  Grey  replied  that  if  the  crews  of  the 
Goeben  and  Breslau  were  returned  at  once  to 
Germany  there  would  be  no  need  to  withdraw 
the  Naval  Mission.  Thereupon  Admiral  Limpus 
received  a  message  that  crews  would  be  made 
up  for  the  Goeben  and  Breslau,  and  that  there 
was  no  mtention  of  sending  the  two  slups 
outside  the  Sea  of  INIarmora  until  the  end  of 
the  war.  This  was  on  August  14,  but  on  the 
very  next  day  Admiral  Limpus  and  all  the 
officers  of  the  British  Naval  Mission  were 
suddenly  replaced  m  theu"  executive  command 
by  Turkish  officers  and  were  ordered,  if  they 
remained,  to  work  at  the  ^Ministry  of  Marine. 
A  dehghtful  Turkish  explanation  of  this  volte 
face  was  given  by  the  Grand  Vizier,  who,  on 
the  following  day,  solemnly  assured  Great 
Britain     that     Turkish     neutrality     would    be 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


45 


maintained.  A  certain  number  of  German 
experts  would  be  left  on  tlie  Goeben  and 
Breslau,  owing  to  the  inability  of  the  Turks  to 
liandlo  tliese  ships  themselves.  "  It  would,"' 
fie  declared,  "  have  been  an  impossible  position 
for  Admiral  Limpus  if  he  had  had  under  his 
direct  orders  a  mixed  crew  of  Turks  and 
Germans,  and  perhaps  the  reason  of  his  with- 
drawal fj-oiu  executive  command  may  lie  in 
this  consideration." 

The  Grand  Vizier,  who  daily  distributed 
smooth  assurances  to  the  Ambassadors  of  the 
I']ntente  Powers,  may  have  been  weakly  anxious 
to  preserve  neutrality,  wliile  the  \Var  IMinister, 
Enver  Pasha,  carried  on  a  strong  propaganda 
in  favour  of  immediate  adhesion  to  the  Triple 
Alliance.  Not  only  was  the  army  mobilized, 
but  a  new  field  of  mines  was  laid  in  tiie  Dar- 
danelles in  the  first  week  of  August,  ajid 
warlike  preparations  were  daily  more  and 
more  in  evidence.  The  attitude  of  England 
was  one  of  marked  forbearance.  On  Avigust  Iti 
the  British  charge  d'affaires  was  instructed, 
as  were  his  colleagues  of  the  Entente,  to  declare 
to  the  Turkish  Government  that  if  Turkey 
would  observe  strict  neutrality  during  the  war, 
England,  France,  and  Russia  would  uphold 
her  independence  and  integrity  against  any 
enemies  that  might  wish  to  use  the  European 
conflict  in  order  to  attack  her.  When  the 
British     Ambassador,    Sir    Louis    ]\Tallet,    wlio 


TALAAT    BEY, 
Minister  of  Interior. 

had  been  on  leave  at  the  outbreak  of  the 
European  War,  returned  to  his  post  he  tele- 
graphed to  Sir  Edward  Grey,  on  August  18, 
that  he  had  been  aacorded  a  moHt  cordial 
reception  by  the  Gi'and  Vizier,  and  that 
though     the     situation   was     delicate    he     had 


CROWD    LISTENING    TO    THE    READING    OF    THE    PROCLAMATION. 


:s  -  2 


46 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


A    VIEW    OF    THE    BOSPHORUS. 


great  hopes  that  if  His  Majesty's  Govern- 
ment would  exercise  patience  it  might  yet  be 
saved.  In  reply  to  his  inquiry  as  to  whether 
the  German  crews  would  be  removed  soon, 
and  what  guarantee  the  Grand  Vizier  would 
give  that  the  Goeben  and  Breslau  would  be 
used  neither  against  Great  Britain  nor  Russia, 
the  Minister  replied  that  neither  -would  go 
into  the  Black  Sea  or  the  Mediterranean. 
Sir  Louis  Mallet  added,  "  His  Higlxness  was 
much  impressed  and  relieved  when  I  informed 
him  of  the  declaration  authorized  in  your 
telegrams  of  August  16.  He  said  that  this 
wovUd  be  of  enormous  assistance  to  him,  and 
he  assured  me  that  I  need  not  be  anxious  lest 
Turkey  should  be  drawn  into  war  with  Great 
Britain  or  with  Russia.  The  present  crisis 
would  pas;^.  I  am  convinced  of  the  absolute 
personal  sincerity  of  the  Grand  Vizier  in  these 
utterances." 


Nevertlieless,  the  fissure  between  the  two 
parties  was  so  great  that  on  August  19  Sir 
Louis  Mallet  telegraphed  :  '"In  view  of  the 
possibility  of  a  coup  d'etat  being  attempted 
with  the  assistance  of  the  Goeben  in  cooperation 
with  the  military  authorities  under  German 
influence,  who  exercise  complete  control,  I  wish 
to  inake  it  clear  that  in  my  opinion  the  presence 
of  the  British  Fleet  at  the  Dardanelles  is  wise. 
I  am  anxious  to  avoid  any  misunderstanding 
as  to  the  gravity  of  the  situation  notuith- 
ptanding  the  assurances  received  from  the 
Grand  Vizier." 

In  order  to  avoid  a  conflict  Sir  Edward  Grey 
was  prejiarcd  to  go  so  far  as  to  recogiuzo  the 
sale  of  the  Goeben  and  Breslau  provided  it  were 
a  genuine  one.  He  informed  the  Turkish 
Ambassador  in  London  tliat  Turkey  would 
have  nothing  to  fear  f roin ,  Great  Britain,  and 
tint  her  integrity  would  be  preserved  in  any 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


47 


conditions  of  peace  which  affected  the  Near 
East,  provided  that  she  preserved  a  real 
neutraUty  during  the  war,  made  the  Goeben 
and  Breslau  entirely  Tiu'kish  by  sending  away 
the  German  crews  of  those  vessels,  and  gave  all 
ordinary  facilities  to  British  merchant  vessels. 
Turkey,  however,  greeted  tills  striking  conces- 
sion in  a  most  remarkable  manner,  and  on 
August  20  Djemal  Pasha,  the  Minister  of 
Marine,  called  on  Sir  Louis  Mallet  and  made 
the  astonishing  proposal  that  the  Capitulations 
should  be  abolished  immediately,  that  the 
two  Turkish  battleships  acquired  by  Great 
Britain  at  the  outbreak  of  war  should  l^e 
returned  immediately  ;  that  interference  in 
the  internal  affairs  of  Turkey  should  be  re- 
nounced ;  that  Western  Thrace  should  be 
restored  to  Turkey  if  Bulgaria  were  to  join 
the  Triple  Alliance,  and  that  the  Greek  Islands 
should  be  restored.  Even  in  the  face  of  these 
extraordinary  demands  Sir  Edward  Grey 
replied  that  he  did  not  wish  to  refuse  all  dis- 
cussion, and  the  English,  French  and  Russian 
Ambassadors  addressed  the  following  communi- 
cation to  the  Porte  :  "  If  the  Turkish  Govern- 
ment will  repatriate  immediately  the  German 
officers  and  crews  of  the  Goeben  and  Breslau,  will 
give  a  written  assvirance  that  all  facilities  shall 
b3  furnished  for  the  peaceful  and  uninterrupted 
passage  of  merchant  vessels,  and  that  all  the 
obligations    of    neutrality    shall    be    observed 


by  Turkey  during  the  present  war,  the  three' 
allied  Powers  will  in  return  agree,  with  regard 
to  the  Capitulations,  to  withdraw  their  extra- 
territorial jurisdiction  as  soon  as  a  scheme  of 
judicial  administration  which  will  satisfy 
modern  conditions  is  set  up.  They  will, 
fiu"ther,  give  a  joint  guarantee  in  writing  that 
they  will  respect  the  independence  and  integrity 
of  Tiu-key,  and  will  engage  that  no  conditions 
in  the  terms  of  peace  at  the  end  of  the  war 
shall  prejudice  this  independence  and  integrity." 
This  remarkable  pronouncement  was  made 
in  vain.  The  war  party  in  the  Cabinet, 
although  in  a  minority,  relied  on  the  guns  oi 
the  Goeben  to  overawe  the  Sultan  himself,  if 
necessary,  and  continued  to  drive  their  im- 
willing  colleagues.  On  September  9  the  Porte 
sent  a  Note  to  the  Powers,  in  which  it 
announced  the  abolition  of  the  Capitulations, 
as  from  October  1.  Even  the  German  and 
Austrian  Ambassadors  made  a  show  of  resenting 
this  unwarrantable  act,  and  on  the  following 
day  identical  Notes  were  addressed  by  the  six 
Great  Powers  to  the  Sublime  Porte,  in  which 
it  was  pointed  out  that  the  capitulatory 
regime  was  not  an  autonomous  institution 
of  the  Empire,  but  the  resultant  of  inter- 
national treaties,  diplomatic  agreements  and 
contractual  acts  of  different  kinds.  It  could 
not,  therefore,  be  abolished  without  the  con- 
sent  of   the   contracting   parties,   and,    in   the 


RECRUITS    AND    RESERVISTS    FROM    PALESTINE,  on  the  lett  ; 

Regulars  oa  the  right. 


43 


THi:     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     IHE     WAIL 


SIR    LOUIS    MALLET, 
British  Ambassador  at  Constantinople. 

absence  of  any  understanding  between  the 
Ottoman  Clovernnient  and  their  respective 
Governments,  the  Ambassadors  refiLsed  to 
recognize  the  executive  force  of  a  vuiilateral 
decision  of  the  SubUme  Porte. 

The    whole    area    of    the    Dardanelles,    Con- 


stantinople, and  the  Bosphorus  w«u»  rapidly 
becoming  neither  more  nor  less  than  a  German 
enclave.  Special  trains  full  of  Ciennan  sailors 
with  officers  were  run  through  Bulgaria,  and 
by  tiic  end  of  August  the  total  passed  tlirough, 
over  and  above  the  original  crews  of  the  Goeben 
and  the  Breslau,  was  over  six  hundred.  In 
addition  to  these,  many  German  military 
reservists  arrived,  and  were  posted  to  garrison 
the  Dardanelles  forts.  The  German  admiral 
on  board  the  Goeben  and  the  German  Govern- 
ment were  the  absolute  masters  of  the  situation 
and  were  in  a  position  to  force  the  hand  of  the 
Turks  at  anj^  moment  which  might  suit  them, 
and  steady  pressure  was  exerted  to  prepare 
public  opinion  for  hoslihties.  Sir  Louis  Mallet, 
m  the  dispatch  wherein  on  his  return  to 
London  he  summarized  the  events  which 
led  up  to  the  final  rupture  of  diplomatic 
relations,  showed  clearly  enough  the  methods 
employed.  German  success  in  the  Eiu'opean 
war  was  said  to  be  assured.  The  perpetual 
menace  to  Tvirkey  from  Russia  might,  it  was 
suggested,  be  averted  by  a  timely  alliance  \\  ith 
Germany  and  Austria.  Egj'pt  might  be  re- 
covered for  the  Empire.  India  and  other 
^Moslem  countries,  rejaiesented  as  groaning 
under  Christian  rule,  might  be  kindled  mto  a 
iiame  of  infinite  possibilities  for  the  Caliphate 
of  Constantinople.  Turkey  would  emerge  from 
the  war  the  one  Great  Power  of  the  East,  even 


TURKISH    TROOPS    LEA\ING    FOR    THE    FRONT. 


THE     TIMES     HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


49 


as  Germany  would  be  the  one  Great  Power  of 
the  West.  Every  agency  which  could  be  used 
to  stimulate  public  opinion  and  to  inflame  it 
against  the  Allies  was  set  at  work,  with  the 
connivance,  and  often  with  the  cooperation, 
of  the  Turkish  authorities.  All  the  Turkish 
newspapers  in  C'onstantinople  became  German 
organs  ;  they  glorified  every  real  or  imaginary 
success  of  Germany  or  Austria  and  minimized 
every  disaster  or  reverse.  The  semi'official 
telegra^jhi.?  agency,  which  was  practically  p. 
department  of  tlie  Ministry  of  the  Interior,  was 
placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  German  propa- 
ganda. Through  all  these  channels  unhmited 
vise  was  made  of  Tiu-key's  one  concrete  grievance 
against  Great  Britain  as  distinguished  from 
other  European  Powers,  the  detention  of  tlie 
two  Dreadnoughts,  the  Sultan  Osman  and  the 
Reshadie.  The  populace  had  contributed  freely 
to  the  fund  raised  by  voluntary  subscription 
to  defray  the  cost  of  these  much-desired 
vessels,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  bi1t(>r 
disappointment  was  felt  when  the  turn  of 
events  prevented  or  postponed  their  acquisition. 
The  "Committee  of  Union  and  Progress," 
the  chief  organization  of  the  Young  Turk 
Movement,  which  had  its  origin  in  Salonika, 
had  been  torn  by  many  intrigues  and  feuds 
since  its  first  great  public  triumph  in  1908. 
But  a  rump  remained  of  which  the  most 
powerful  members  were  Enver  Pasha,  the 
Minister  of  War,  Djemal  Pasha,  the  ^linister 
of  Marine,  Talaat  Bey,  the  Minister  of  the 
Interior,  and  Djavid  Bey,  the  Minister  of 
Finance.  Of  these  Djavid  Bey  alone  was  a 
champion  of  neutrality,  and  Berlin,  finding  his 
opposition  uncompromising,  in  the  end  forced 
his  resignation.  Enver  Pasha  was  an  open 
and  whole -liearted  partisan  of  Germany.  Talaat 
Bey,  described  by  Sir  Louis  Mallet  as  "  the  most 
powerful  civiUan  m  the  Cabinet  and  the  most 
conspicuous  of  the  Committee  leaders,"  was 
no  less  real  an  adherent,  though  it  was  not  till 
early  in  October  that  he  was  openly  reckoned 
as  a  member  of  the  war  party..  Djemal  Pasha, 
likewise,  wore  the  mask  of  neutrality  for  long, 
but  only  in  order  to  attempt  to  conceal  the 
pre]iarations  which  were  being  made.  Against 
these,  at  least  apparently,  were  ranged  the 
Sultan,  the  Heir  Apparent,  the  Grand  Vizier, 
Djavid  Bey,  and  the  remaining  members  of 
the  Ministry — enough  to  constitute  a  clear 
majority  against  a  desperat(>  \'enture,  but 
unfortunately  the  majority'  had  no  means 
of    asserting    itself    against     the    folly    of    the 


TEWFIK    PASHA, 

Turkish  Ambassador  !n  London,  leaving  the 

Embassy. 

fire-eaters,  who  in  the  last  resort  were  prepared 
to  train  the  guns  of  the  Goeben  upon  Con- 
stantinople itself.  Both  the  j)ro-Germans  and 
the  Germans  themselves,  however,  were  anxious 
to  retain  the  Grand  \'izier  in  office  if  possible, 
and  to  avoid  a  coup  d'etat.  As  Sir  Louis 
Mallet  later  pointed  out,  it  was  clearly  only 
as  an  extreme  step  that  the  Monarch  whom 
Pan-Islamic  pro-C!ermans  acclaimed  as  the 
hope  of  Islam,  and  whom  the  devout  in  some 
places  had  been  taught  to  regard  a-s  hardly 
distinguishable  from  a  true  belie\'er,  would 
run  the  risk  of  scandalizing  the  Moslem  world, 
whom  he  hoped  to  s(!t  ablaze  to  the  undoing  of 
J'^ngland,  Russia,  and  France,  by  using  the 
guns  of  the  Goeben  to  force  the  hands  of  the 
Sultan-Calij)li. 

On  September  :21  I  lie  I'ritish  Ambassador 
saw  the  Sultan  for  the  last  lime,  au'l  read  to 
him  a  personal  message  from  King  Ccorge, 
who  ex]iress(>d  his  profound  r(>gret  that  "'  the 
exigencies  of  unforeseen  circumstances  "  had 
compelled    (Jreat    IJritain    to    detain    tlu>    two 


50 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


MOBILIZATION. 
Marching  into  Constantinople  to  join  the  Colours. 

warships  intended  for  the  Turkish  Navy, 
and  expressed  the  hope  that  the  decision  to 
return  these  vessels  to  Turkey  at  the  end  of  the 
European  War  would  suffice  to  prove  that 
their  detention  was  dvie  to  "  no  unfriendly 
intention  towards  an  Empire  bound  to  vis  by 
a  friendship  of  more  than  a  century."  "  My 
Sovereign,"  said  the  Ambassador,  "  trusts 
that  Turkey  will  do  nothing  to  prevent  his 
Government  from  acting  up  to  this  decision, 
that  she  will  maintain  strict  and  absolute 
neutrality  during  the  present  war,  and  tliat 
there  will  be  no  delay  in  putting  an  end  to 
certain  facts  contrary  to  neutrality  which  have 
caused  some  anxiety  as  to  the  attitude  of  the 
Turkish  GoN^ernment." 

Tlie  Sultan  listened  to  his  communication  in 
silence  until  the  Master  of  the  Ceremonies 
translated  the  clause  containing  the  words 
"  certain  facts  contrary  to  neutrality."  He 
then  broke  in  with  an  eager  disclaimer  of 
any  unneutral  conduct  on  the  part  of  Turkey. 
The  rest  of  this  interesting  interview  is  best 
recorded  in  the  Ambassador's  o\\  n  ^vords : 

On  my  mentioning,  as  a  specific  instance,  the  retention 
of  German  officer's  and  crews  on  board  the  Goeben 
and  Breslau,  His  Majesty  explained  with  some  lucidity 
that  they  had  been  kept  for  a  short  time  to  train  the 
Turkish  crews.  Tlie  "  captains  "  available  in  the 
Turkish  Navy  were  unequal  to  the  task,  and  it  was 
necessary  for  that  reason  to  do  what  had  been  done. 
The  German  crews  would  be  sent  away  in  "  five  or  ten 
days,"  and  the  officers  also.  Only  one  or  two  of  the 
latter  would  be  retained.  He  would  speak  franklj',  he 
said.  Great  Britain  was  a  great  Power  with  a  great 
navy,  and  had  no  need  of  the  two  ships  of  the  Ottoman 
fleet.  Great  Britain  had  taken  them,  but  he  knew 
they  would  be  given  back  at  the  end  of  the  war.  On 
my  remarking  that  Great  Britain  wished  to  make 
absolutely  sure  of  the  position  at  sea,  the  Sultan  again 
said  that  she  was  too  great  a  maritime  Power  to  need 


these  ships,  but  he  once  more  stated  his  conviction 
that  they  would  be  given  back.  Anyhow,  he  and  hia 
Government  were  not  going  to  depart  from  their 
neutrality.  His  Majesty  repeated  this  more  than  once, 
saying  that  they  knew  that  that  was  the  only  path  of 
safety,  and  that  his  great  desire  was  to  keep  the  peace. 
He  laid  stress  on  the  friendship  between  Great  Britain 
and  Turkey.  This  was  the  more  striking,  because  the 
words  were  not  put  into  his  mouth,  as  might  be  sup- 
posed, by  myself,  the  Master  of  Ceremonies  having  quite 
failed  to  render  the  parts  of  my  communication  in 
which  I  dwelt  on  past  relations  between  England  and 
Turkey. 

When  referring  to  what  the  Sultan  had  said  about 
the  need  for  training  his  navy,  1  expressed  regret  that 
the  British  naval  mission  had  not  been  allowed  to 
complete  that  task.  His  Majesty  did  not  seem  to  grasp 
the  main  point,  but  on  mj'  referring  to  the  circum- 
stances of  Admiral  Limpus's  departure,  he  broke  in  with 
some  emotion,  and  said  twice  over  that  it  was  not  by 
his  wish  that  the  admiral  had  left  Constantinople  with- 
out an  audience.  The  admiral  had  not  asked  for  one  or 
come  to  the  Palace.  Had  he  done  so  he,  tho  Sultan, 
would  have  postponed  all  other  business  in  order  to  see 
him.  I  said  I  would  convey  this  to  Admiral  Limpus. 
I  also  promised  to  communicate  the  Sultan's  assurances, 
which  I  said  I  sincerely  believed,  to  the  King,  who  would 
be  gratified  at  receiving  them. 

Just  before  I  took  my  leave.  His  Majesty  was  good 
enough  to  express  his  warm  personal  regard,  and  made 
some  further  kind  remarks  about  the  value  which  he 
attached  to  his  personal  relations  with  me.  The  Sultan 
spoke  throughout  in  the  most  homely  language,  but 
with  great  liveliness  and  point,  and  with  obvious 
sincerity.  His  assurances  about  his  desire  to  observe 
neutrality  and  remain  at  peace  rather  lost  than  gained 
in  force  by  the  way  in  which  tho  Master  of  Ceremonies 
(whose  mind  is  slow  and  whose  French  is  defective) 
translated  them.  His  remarks  on  the  embargo  on  the 
two  ships  were  plainly,  but  not  discourteously  or  resent- 
fully, worded. 

Amongst  the  "  facts  contrary  to  neutrality  " 
there   was   much   more   than   the   case   of   the 


THE    TIMES    HIS'J^OEY    OF    THE     WAR. 


51 


Goeben  and  tlie  Breslau.  British  merchant 
vessels  carrying  cargoes  from  Russia  to  the 
Mediterranean  liad  throughout  August  been 
subjected  to  delays  and  searches  at  the  Dar- 
danelles, and  for  one  incident  at  the  harbour 
of  Chanak  the  Turldsh  Government  had  been 
oompelled  to  tender  an  apology.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  case  of  the  Goeben  and  Breslau  had 
compelled  the  British  Navy  to  keep  a  close 
watch  at  the  entrance  of  the  Straits,  which 
greatly  perturbed  the  Turks.  On  September  26 
a  Turkish  destroyer  was  stopped  outside  the 
Dardanelles  and  turned  back.  Thereupon 
the  Commandant  of  the  Dardanelles  closed  the 
Straits,  and  in  spite  of  assurances  given  by  the 
Grand  Vizier  they  were  not  re-opened.  The 
Goeben  and  the  Breslavi  made  cruises  in  the 
Black  Sea,  and  niimerous  German  vessels, 
of  which  the  most  important  were  the  Corco- 
vado  and  the  General,  served  as  auxiliaries  to 
tliis  German  Black  Sea  Fleet.  Secret  com- 
munications with  the  German  General  Staff 
were  established  early  in  August  by  means  of 
the  wireless  apparatus  of  the  Corcovado, 
which  was  anchored  opposite  the  German 
Embassy  at  Therapia.  Other  German  ships 
played  with  the  Turkish  flag  as  they  pleased, 
in  order  to  facilitate  their  voyages,  or  cloak  their 
real  character  while  in  port,  and  a  department 
was  constituted  at  the  German  Embassy  for 
the  purpose  of  requisitioning  supplies  for  the 


use  of  the  German  Govermnent  and  their 
ships. 

By  the  middle  of  September  it  was  calculated 
that  there  wei-e  over  4,000  German  soldiers  and 
sailors  in  Constantinople  alone.  The  oflficers 
of  the  German  military  mission,  under  General 
Liman  von  Sanders,  displayed  "  a  ubiquitous 
activity,"  and  were  the  main  organizers  of 
preparations  in  S^Tia  which  directly  menaced 
Egypt,  and  became  a  source  of  pre-occupation 
and  a  theme  of  remonstrance  to  the  British 
Government. 

In  October  a  new  weight  was  cast  into  the 
scale  by  the  importation  of  large  quantities 
of  bulUon  consigned  to  the  German  Ambassador, 
and  delivered  under  military  guard  at  the 
Deutsche  Bank.  The  total  amount  was  esti- 
mated at  £4,000,000.  A  definite  arrangement 
was  arrived  at  with  the  war  group  of  ^Ministers 
that  as  soon  as  the  financial  provision  reached 
a  certain  figure  Turkey  could  be  called  upon  to 
declare  war.  The  attempt  to  win  over  the 
Grand  Vizier  and  induce  him  to  make  the 
declaration  was  finally  abandoned,  and  by 
the  last  week  in  October  it  was  decided  that 
drastic  steps  to  provoke  the  outbreak  must  be 
taken.  On  October  29  it  was  reported  from 
Cairo  that  an  armed  body  of  2,000  Bedouins 
had  made  an  incursion  into  the  Sinai  peninsula, 
and  occupied  the  wells  of  Magdala,  and  that 
their    objective    was    an    attack    on    the    Suez 


BEDOUIN    INFANTRY 


62 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


[Barrat!. 

PRINCE    SAID    HALIM    PASHA, 
Grand  Vizier,  and  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs. 

Canal.  On  the  uiorning  of  the  same  daj'  three 
Turkish  tori)edo-boats  raided  Odessa  harbour, 
sank  the  Russian  guardship  Donetz,  damaged 
the  French  ship  Portugal,  killing  two  of  the 
crew,  and  also  damaged  three  Russian  steamers. 


Some  loss  of  life  was  caused  m  tlie  town  itscUf 
hy  sliell-fire.  Tlieodosia  was  likewise  bom- 
barded. The  British  Ambas.sador  records  that 
it  was  certain  that  the  actual  orders  for 
these  attacks  were  given  by  the  German 
admiral  on  the  evening  of  October  27.  Tlie 
grave  new.s  reached  Constantinople  on  the  after- 
noon of  October  2!».  .M.  Bompard,  the  French 
Ambassador,  and  Sir  i^ouis  Mallet  immediately 
called  on  M.  de  Giers,  their  Russian  colleague, 
and  decided  to  ask  for  authority  from  their 
Governments  to  confront  the  Porte  with  the 
alternative  of  the  rupture  of  diplomatic  rela- 
1  ions  or  the  dismissal  of  the  German  naval  and 
military  missions. 

In  the  following  words  the  British  Ambassador 
describes  the  end  of  that  friendship  of  more  than 
a  century,  of  which  Eong  George  had  so  lately 
and  so  vainly  reminded  the  unhappy  Sultan 
Mohammed  V. : 

On  tb.p  morning  of  the  30th,  liowevor.  I  learnt  from 
my  Russian  colleague  that  he  had  recived  instructions 
from  his  Government  immediately  to  ask  for  his  pass- 
))orts.  He  had  written  to  the  Grand  \'izier  to  ask  for 
an  interview,  which  his  Highnt^ss  had  begged  him  to 
postpone  until  the  following  day  owing  to  indisposition. 
The  instructions  of  my  Russian  colleague  being  in  a 
categorical  form,  he  had  therefore  been  constrained  to 
address  a  note  to  the  Grand  Vizier  demanding  his 
passports  ;  and  I  and  my  F'rench  colleague,  acting  on 
the  instructions,  with  which  the  Ambassadors  of  the 
allied  Power.-;  had  at  my  suggestion  already  been  fiimLshed, 
to  leave  Constantinople  simultaneously  should  any  one 
of  them  be  coinpelled  to  ask  for  his  passports,  owing 
either  to  a  Turkish  declaration  of  war  or  to  some  intoler- 
able act  of  hostility,  decided   without  further  delay  to 


GENERAL    LIMAN    VON    SANDERS  (centre)  AND    HIS    STAFF. 


THE    TIMES    HISTOEY    OF     THE     WAR. 


53 


IHE    "BRESLAU"   ("MIDILLU") 
Flying  the  Turkish  flag. 


write  to  the  Grand  Vizier  and  ask  in  ovu-  turn  for  inter- 
views to  enable  us  to  carry  out  these  instructions.     In 
view  of  his  Highness'*  indisposition  we  had  not  expected 
to  be  received  that  day,  but  a  few  hours  later  the  Grand 
Vizier  sent  us  word  that  he  would,  nevertheless,  be  glad 
to  see  us,  and  notwithstanding  the  excuse  which  he  had 
made  earlier  in  the  day  he  received  the  Russian  Ambas- 
sador also  in  the  course  of  the  afternoon.     My  interview 
with    the   Grand    Vizier   partly    coincided   with   that   of 
M.  de  Gicrs,  and  preceded  that  of  JI.  Bompard.     It  was 
of   a  painful   description.     His   Highness  convmced  nie 
of  his  sincerity  in  disclr.iming  all  knowledge  of  oi  partici- 
pation in  the  events  which  had  led  to  the  rupture,  and 
entreated  me  to  believe  that  the  situation  was  even  now 
not  irretrievable.     I   replied  that   the  time   had  passed 
for   assurances.     The    crisis   which    I    had    predicted    to 
his   Highness   at   almost   every   interview   which    I    had 
had   with   him   since  my  return  had  actually  occurred, 
and  unless  some  adequate  satisfaction  were  immediately 
given  by  the  dismissal  of  the  (Jerman  missions,  which 
could   alone   prevent   the   recurrence   of  attempts   upon 
Egyptian  territory  and  attacks  on  Russia,  war  with  the 
Allies  was  inevitable.     My  Russian  colleague  had  already 
demanded    his  passports,   and  I   must,   in   pursuance   of 
tlie  instructions  I  had  received,  follow  the  same  course. 
The   Grand    Vizier   again    protested    that   even   now   he 
could  undo  what  the  War  party  had  done  without  his 
knowledge  or  consent.     In  reply  to  the  doubt  which  I 
expressed  as  to  the  means  at  his  disposal,  he  said  that 
he   had   on   his  side   moral   forces   which   could   not    but 
triumph,  and  that  he  meant  to  fight  on  to  the  end.     He 
did   not,    indeed,    hint   at   a   possibility   of   immediately 
dismissing   the   German    mission,    but    he    informed    me 
tliat  there   wa^  to   be  a  meeting  of  the   Council  at  his 
hou.se  that  evening,   when  he  would  call   upon  his  col- 
leagues  to   support   him   in   his   determination   to   avert 
war  with  the  allied  Towers. 

The  Council  was  duly  held,  and,  as  ho  had  predicted, 
the    majority    of    the    Ministers    supported    the    Grand 


Vizier,  who  made  a  strong  appeal  in  favour  of  peace, 
and  was  seconded  by  Djavid  Bey.  But  the  powerless- 
ness  of  the  Sultan's  Ministers  to  do  more  than  vote  in 
the  Council  Chamber  was  evident.  The  question  of 
dLsmissing  the  German  naval  oificers  was  discu.ssed,  but 
no  decision  to  do  so  was  taken,  and  no  Minister  ventured 
even  to  propose  the  e.xpulsion  of  the  military  mission. 
In  the  interval  the  War  party  had  sealed  their  resohi- 
tion  to  go  forward,  by  publishing  a  conununiqu6  in 
which  it  was  stated  that  the  first  acts  of  hostility  in  the 
Black  Sea  had  come  from  the  Russian  side.  Untrue 
and  grotesque  as  it  was,  this  invention  succeeded  in 
deceiving  many  of  the  public. 

It  is  not  possible  to  establish  by  proof  which  of  the 
Ministers  had  pre-knowledge  of  the  German  admiral's 
coup,  but  it  may  be  regarded  as  certain  that  Enver 
Pasha  was  aware  of  it,  and  highly  probable  that  Talaat 
Bey  was  also  an  accomplice. 

The  story  of  a  Russian  provocation  was  plainly  an 
afterthought,  and  if  the  oHicial  report  of  the  R\issian 
Government  were  not  suiTicient  to  disprove  it.  I  could 
produce  independent  evidence  to  show  that  the  orders 
to  begin  hostilities  wei-e  given  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Bosphorus  on  the  evening  of  October  27  as  the 
result  of  a  conspiracy  hatched  between  the  German 
representatives  in  Constantinople  and  a  small  luid  un- 
scrupulous Turkish  faction. 

My  Russian  colleague  loft  C-instantinoplo  without 
incident  on  the  evening  of  October  ,"{].  Jly  own 
departure  was  eventually  arranged  for  the  following; 
evening,  when  I  loft  for  Dcdcagatch,  accompanied  by 
my  stall  of  sixty  ollicials  and  their  families  ;  the  Britislj 
advisers  in  the  service  of  the  Turkish  Government  and 
some  other  British  subjpct.s  also  travelled  with  me.  My 
French  colleague  and  his  staff  left  by  tlio  same  train. 

Owing  to  the  wanton  refusal  of  the  niiliiary  authorities, 
at  the  last  moment  to  allow  the  depart uro  of  a  grcvit 
number  of  British  and  Frencli  subjects  who  were  to- 
ha\('  left  by  an  earlier  train  than  that   which  liail  been 


28     3 


54 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


DJEMAL  PASHA,  MINISTER    OF    MARINE 

(fifth  from  the  right),  with  Turkish  and  German  Officers  on  board  the 

("  Sultan  Yawuz  Selim  "). 


Goeben" 


placed  at  my  disposal,  the  station  was  for  some  hours 
the  scene  of  indescribable  confusion  and  turmoil. 

My  protests  and  those  of  the  French  Ambassador 
were  disregarded,  and  after  protracted  discussion,  we 
agreed  to  leave  matters  in  the  hands  of  the  United  States 
Ambassador,  who  undertook  to  use  all  his  influence  to 
procure  the  departiu-e  of  our  fellow  subjects  on  the 
following  day.  The  "  sous-chef  de  protocole  "  of  the 
Sublime  Porte  and  the  "  chef  de  cabinet  particulier  "  of 
the  Slinistry  of  Foreign  Affairs  were  sent  to  bid  farewell 


to  M.  Bompard  and  myself  at  the  railway  station,  and 
two  Secretaries  of  the  Political  Department  of  the 
Ministry  accompanied  us  to  the  frontier. 

^Ir.  ^Nlorgenthau,  the  United  States  Ambas- 
sador, was  left  in  charge  of  both  French  and 
British  interests  at  Constantinople.  The  Italian 
Ambassador  fulfilled  a  like  function  for  Russia. 


CHAPTER    L. 


THE  TURKISH  ARMY. 


Turkish  Military  System — German  Reforms — Difficulties  of  Conscription — The  Balkan 
Wars — The  Macedonian  Problem — Enver  Pasha  and  the  Revolution — Sketch  of  the 
Young  Turk  Movement — Enver's  Career — German  Intrigues — The  Liman  Military  IVIission 
— Its  Difficulties — Peace  Strength  of  the  Army — Distribution  of  Army  Corps. 


OF  all  military  forces  in  Eiirope  the 
Turkish  Army  is  the  most  difficult 
to  estimate  with  any  approach  to 
accuracy.  No  Government  by  skilful 
artifice  could  be  inore  successful  in  baffling  the 
curiosity  of  the  outsider  than  is  the  Turk  by 
the  simpler  means  of  statistical  incompetence 
and  a  natural  disinclination  to  make  practice 
march  with  theory. 

In  the  years  immediately  preceding  the  war 
the  army  had  been  subjected  to  a  series 
of  successive  reforms,  carried  out  under 
the  guidance  of  German  officers,  and  no 
exact  accounts  were  ever  published  of  the 
extent  or  nature  of  these  reforms.  Indeed,  it 
may  be  said  with  confidence  that  so  great  was 
the  tangle  of  Turkish  military  administration, 
so  incompetent  and  weak  the  central  control 
over  provincial  commands,  contractors,  and 
remote  officials,  that  the  German  reorganizers 
of  the  Tiu-kish  Army  must  themselves  have  had 
but  an  inaccurate  knowledge  of  the  reserves  in 
men  and  material  at  their  disposal.  There  are 
many  signs  that,  over  a  long  period  of  years, 
both  before  and  after  the  l^alkan  Wars,  and 
into    the    present    campaigns,    they    had    con- 


sistently   overestimated     the    military    possi- 
bilities of  modern  Turkey. 

Theoretically  the  Turkish  system  bore  a 
general  resemblance  to  that  of  the  rest  of 
Europe.  The  principle  of  conscription  had 
long  been  recognized,  but  during  the  reign  of 
Abdul  Hamid  the  Christian  population  of  the 
Empire  was  not  allowed  to  serve  in  the  army 
and  was  forced  to  pay  a  heavy  tax  instead. 
^Vith  the  advent  of  the  Young  Turks  to  power 
there  came  a  supposed  change,  and  under  the 
Constitution  Christians  were  liable  for  military 
service.  The  Balkan  Christian,  as  might  have 
been  expected,  did  not  prove  a  very  enthu- 
siastic defender  of  the  Sultan's  power,  and  the 
Turks  complained  bitterly  that  in  the  battles 
of  Kirk  ICilisse  and  Lule  Burgas,  fought  in  the 
Tliracian  campaign  of  1912,  the  Christian 
soldiers  deserted  in  large  numbers  to  the 
Bulgarian  standard.  The  Balkan  War  and  the 
treaties  of  London  and  Bukarest  deprived 
Turkey  of  the  most  w  arlike  Christian  population 
of  the  p]mpire.  The  Ainnenian  and  the  Syrian 
added  little  strength,  and  since  the  disasters  of 
1912  and  1913  the  Yoimg  Turldsh  experiment 
of  using  Christian  material  had  been  discredited. 


3i> 


56 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


Jews  figured  in  the  army,  but  they  were  not  a 
very  important  element,  and  in  the  main  it  may 
be  said  that  the  Turkish  Government  had  to  rely 
tor  its  defence  upon  a  system  of  conscription 
applied  only  to  the  Musulmans  of  the  Empire. 
This  statement,  unfortunately  for  the  Turk, 
requires  another  important  qualification,  for 
the  Turlcish  writ  ran  but  lamely  amongst  the 
Arab  provinces.  The  Yemen  had  for  many 
years  been  in  a  state  either  of  active  or  simmer- 
ing rebellion,  and  instead  of  being  a  source  of 
supply  had  been  a  grave  for  fine  battalions  of 
the  Tiu-kish  Army.  It  may  be  calculated 
that  out  of  an  Empire  which  may  be  estimated 
as  containing  20,000,000  inhabitants  the  Turkish 
Anpy  could  only  draw  soldiers  from  a  population 
of  some  8,000,000 — men,  women,  and  children. 
Men  were  liable  for  service  from  twenty  to 
forty  years  of  age.  Nine  years  were  spent  with 
the  First  Line  or  Active  Service  Army,  of 
which  in  the  case  of  infantry  three  were  with 
the  colours,  in  the  case  of  cavalry  and  artillery 
foiu-  ;  six  and  five  years  respectively  were  spent 
in  the  reserve.  Nine  years  were  spent  in  the 
Redif,  or  reserve  of  the  active  troops  (Nizam). 
There  was,  properly  speaking,  no  second  line, 
and  the  Redif  corresponded  to  the  German 
Landwehr.  The  last  two  years  were  spent  in 
the  Territorial  Militia  (Mustafiz).  This  line  is 
sometimes  referred  to  as  the  Landstuim,  but 
it  possessed  no  cadres  in  peace  time,  and  was 
most  generally  found  without  arms  in  war  time. 


In    principle    a    Turkish    Army    Corps    con- 
sisted of  three  divisions  or  thirty  battalion.s. 
It  had  thirty  batteries  of  field,  three  of  horse, 
and   three   of   mountain   artillery.     A   battery 
had  six   guns,  and   each  corps   had   216   guns. 
A  field  battery  had  four  officers,  and  120  non- 
commissioned officers  and  men  ;    a  mountain 
battery  had   three   officers   and   100   non-com- 
missioned   officers    and    men,    and   a   howitzer 
battery  had    four    officers    and    120    non-com- 
missioned officers  and  men.    There  were  eleven 
battalions   in   all   of   jDioneers,   railway   troops, 
telegraph     troops,    sappers    and    miners,    etc. 
There    were    in    1912    140   quick-firing    Krupp 
mountain    guns   of     7'5   cm.,   the  majority  of 
which  fell  into  the  hands  of  Bulgars,  Serbs,  and 
Greeks.     Since   then,   however,    108   Schneider 
quick-firing     mountain     gvms      were    received 
from      France,      and      the      Austrian      Skoda 
Works     had     doubtless     by     the     date     when 
Turkey      entered      the      war      delivered     the 
large  order  given   them    for    10' 5    cm.    quick- 
tiring  howitzers.      Many  batteries  had,  instead 
of  the  regulation   T'f)    cm.    quick-firing  Krupp 
field     gim,     the     old     pattern     field     gun     of 
8-7  cm. 

In  October,  1912,  only  eight  army  coqjs 
took  the  field,  and  these  lost  the  greater 
part  of  their  field  artillery.  Under  German 
reorganization  most  of  the  batteries  seemed 
to  have  fovir  guns,  but  some  had  six  ; 
a       four  -  company       organization       appeared 


-iPt  4     % 


TUKKISH    CAMEL    TRANSPOKT. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


57 


TURKISH  AHivOi'LANIi  ABoUT  TO   tL\    FKOai   Si.  STEFAiNO   TO    CONSl  AN TiNOPLE. 


to  have  replaced  the  old  five-company  battalion. 
The  infantry  of  the  first  line  was  armed  with  a 
7*65  mm.  Manser  magazine  rifle.  The  Redifs 
were  supjjosed  to  have  the  same,  but  many 
had  the  9*5  mm.  Mauser,  and  the  supply  was 
eked  out  with  Martini-Henrys. 

The  cavalry  consisted  in  1912  of  40  regiments, 
or  200  squadrons,  of  70  men,  arn:\ed  with  a  sabre 
and  a  Mauser  carbine.  One  of  the  peculiar 
institutions  created  and  fostered  by  Abdul 
Hamid  was  the  Hamidian  cavalry.  They  con- 
sisted of  bands  of  Asiatic  tribesmen,  chiefly 
Kurds,  whose  official  business  was  to  protect 
the  frontiers  that  look  towards  Russia  and 
Persia,  but  whose  actual  duty,  carried  out  with 
great  zest,  was  to  make  life  a  burden  to  the 
Christian  inhabitants  of  the  Armenian  vilayets, 
where  they  slaughtered,  pillaged  and  ravaged 
to  their  hearts'  content.  Under  the  Turco- 
German  reform  scheme  the  Hamidian  cavalry 
were  abolished,  and  24  regiments  of  tribal 
cavalry,  organized  on  a  militia  system  from 
the  Kurdish  and  Arab  tribes  in  Asia  Minor, 
were  substituted  for  it.  The  leopard,  however, 
does  not  change  its  spots,  and  the  Kurdish 
tribal  cavalryman,  whether  styled  Hamidian 
or  not,  probably  remained  very  much  as  he  was. 

The  Minister  of  War  was  entirely  responsible 
for  the  army,  but  he  was  assisted  by  the  Chief  of 
the  General  Staff,  and  by  an  Under-Secretary, 
or  Musteshar,  who  was  always  a  general  officer. 


The  General  Staff  department  consisted  of  four 
sections,  and  outside  these  there  was  a  director- 
general  of  military  factories,  a  sort  of  master- 
general  of  ordnance,  who  was  formerly  coin- 
pletely  independent,  but  was  made  by  the  Young 
Turks  subordinate  to  the  Minister  of  War.  He 
still  had  his  own  independent  budget,  which  was 
presented  separately  to  Parliament.  For  the 
last  two  years,  however,  before  the  war  tlio 
authority  of  the  ]Ministor  of  War  had  been 
daily  abdicated  in  favour  of  General  Liman 
von  Sandars,  otlierwise  known  as  Liman  Pasha, 
who  was  the  chief  of  a  very  numerous  German 
military  mission  to  Turkey.  The  history  of 
European  reform  in  the  Turkish  Army  is  a  long 
record  of  failure.  During  the  Crimean  W^ar, 
when  Turkey  and  Great  Britain  were  allies, 
British  officers  in  considerable  numbers  were 
accredited  to  the  Turkisli  Army,  and  succeeded, 
temporarily,  in  the  face  of  intrigue,  corruption, 
jealousy,  and  heart-breaking  obstacles  of  every 
kind,  in  working  considerable  improvement  and 
in  nuvlving  good  use  ox  the  always  magnificent 
material  which  the  Turkish  Army  provided. 

The  story  of  General  Fenwick  \\'illiams' 
heroic  defence  of  Kars  is  a  typica\  example  of 
the  work  which  Englishmen  were  called  upon  to 
do  and  of  the  tremendous  obstacles  which  they 
had  to  fight,  but  there  have  been  many  minor 
parallels  to  this  striking  and  well-known  case. 
Williams  was  sent  to  Kars  as  a  British  Commis- 


58 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


TURKISH    INFANTRY. 


sioner,  and,  strictly  speaking,  his  only  duties 
uere  to  transmit  to  his  own  Government  a 
report  of  the  state  of  affairs  in  the  Turkish 
camp.  He  arrived  in  the  autumn  of  1854,  and 
it  is  more  than  probable  that,  if  he  had  confined 
himself  to  his  duties,  there  would  have  been  no 
Turlcish  Army  in  the  following  year.  But  this 
remarkable  man,  who  had  spent  the  greater 
part  of  his  life  in  the  East  and  had  been  many 
years  in  Turkey,  was  not  content  to  be  an 
observer  in  such  critical  hours.  He  saw  the  key 
of  Turkey  in  Asia  defended  by  an  armed  rabble, 
which  had  already  been  ruined  by  its  own 
officers  and  was  rapidly  dissolving  owing  to 
plunder  and  peculation.  The  position  which  he 
found  was  "  an  innovation  in  all  military 
science."  The  artillery  was  nearest  the  enemy, 
the  infantry  close  to  the  city,  and  the  cavalry 
far  away  southwards  on  the  road  to  Erzrum. 
The  Commander-in-Chief  was  supposed  to  have 
a  Staff,  but  the  only  plan  of  operations  in  his 
mind  was  the  vague  one  that  he  had  to  fight 
the  Giaours. 

When  the  news  was  spread  that  a  British 
Commissioner  was  arriving  there  were  frantic 
efforts  made  to  burnish  up  accoutrements  and 
introduce  a  little  order  into  the  camp,  but 
^Villiams  was  not  to  be  deceived.  He  at  once 
interfered,  and,  as  has  been  well  said,  he  thereby 
committed  a  breach  of  etiquette,  but  saved 
Asia  Minor.  Instead  of  accepting  the  muster- 
rolls  of  the  troops  which  were  handed  to  him, 
he  had  the  men  counted,  and,  suramoning  to  his 
presence  all   the  gang  of  corrupt  officers  and 


contractors,  he  called  them  sternly  to  account 
and  immediately  establislied  a  strong  personal 
ascendancy  which  he  never  afterwards  lost. 

In  all  the  history  of  Turkish  official  corrup- 
tion there  has  been  no  more  disgraceful  instance 
than  that  of  Kars  in  the  Crimean  War.  The 
Englishmen  in  the  town  came  to  the  conclusion 
that,  dishonesty  was  the  only  system  which 
appeared  to  be  well  organized.  They  were,  in 
fact,  thoroughly  disgusted  with  their  allies 
and  acquired  a  great  respect  for  their  enemies, 
the  Russians.  Then,  as  now,  the  Armenians 
were  strongly  on  the  side  of  Russia,  and  one 
of  Williams'  officers  records  that  the  Tsar, 
throughout  all  his  vast  dominions,  did  not 
possess  more  staunch  and  zealous  partisans 
than  these  Ottoman  subjects.  But,  he  added, 
*'  our  indignation  at  their  open  and  industrious 
partisanship  in  favour  of  the  enemy  was 
somewhat  modified  when  we  heard  of  the  wrongs 
and  oppressions  which  had  been  abundantly 
heaped  on  them."  In  spite  of  lies,  treachery, 
and  cholera  within,  and  of  the  complete 
failure  of  Omar  Pasha  to  relieve  him  from  the 
coast  or  Selim  Pasha  'from  Erzrum,  Wilhams 
held  the  fortress  till  the  end  of  November,  1855, 
when  at  last  he  was  compelled  to  surrender. 

Later  on  another  Englishman,  General 
Valentine  Baker,  known  as  Baker  Pasha, 
established,  like  Williams,  a  strong  personal 
influence  over  the  Turks,  and  during  the 
Russo -Turkish  War  of  1877-8  achieved  a  great 
military  position.  Yet  so  great  was  the  Turks' 
distrust  of  foreigners  that  Baker  complained 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


59 


that  up  to  the  end  liis  authority  could  only  be 
exercised  in  an  indirect  manner,  and  that  he 
was  never  actually  allowed  to  command  troops 
or  to  give  a  direct  order. 

A  similar  bitter  experience  befell  the  officers 
who  at  various  times  were  the  instruments 
of  the  refonn  schemes  of  the  great  Powers  in 
Tiu-key.  Their  work,  it  is  true,  was  not  in 
the  army,  but  in  the  gendarmerie,  but  what 
is  true  for  one  is  true  for  the  other.  Owing  to 
the  turbulent  state  of  the  Empire  and  its  lack 
of  cohesion,  it  was  necessary  to  maintain  a 
large  gendarmerie,  and  the  force  consisted 
actually  of  some  42,000  men,  of  whom  16,000 
were  mounted.  After  the  BerUn  Treaty  in 
1878,  British  officers  under  Baker  Pasha  for  a 
short  time  attempted  to  reorganize  the  gen- 
darmerie in  the  Armenian  vilayets.  They  did 
extremely  good  w'ork,  and  their  presence 
afforded  a  measure  of  protection  to  the  op- 
pressed Armenians,  but  their  successes  were 
rather  those  of  military  Consuls  than  of  com- 
manding officers,  for  they  were  unable  to  get 
the  reins  of  power  into  their  own  hands,  and 
shortly  after  INIr.  Gladstone's  return  to  office 
in  1880  they  were  withdrawn  for  some  reason 
which  has  never  been  sufficiently  set  forth. 

In  1903  the  Emperors  of  Russia  and  Austria 
met  at  Miirsteg,  at  a  shooting  box  of  the  latter, 
and  devised  a  programme  for  reform  in  Mace- 
donia. As  a  result  of  this,  the  Macedonian 
vilayets  were  divided  into  sectors,  and  Austrian, 


British,  French,  Italian  and  Russian  officers 
were  sent  to  undertake  the  reform  of  the  gen- 
darmerie. Germany  refused  to  participate  in 
this  scheme,  in  order  to  avoid  giving  offence  to 
Abdul  Hamid,  to  whom  all  attempts  at  reform 
were  thoroughly  distasteful.  The  officers  of 
the  foreign  Powers,  in  spite  of  stupendous 
difficulties,  succeeded  in  effecting  a  certain 
measure  of  reform,  and  the  British  in  their 
sector  at  least  managed  to  turn  the  gendarmerie 
into  a  smart,  well-dressed  and  well-drilled  force, 
for  which  the  insistence  of  the  Powers  seciored 
regular  pay.  Nevertheless,  the  Sultan  obsti- 
nately refused  to  allow  any  foreign  officer  to 
have  any  executive  authority  whatever,  or  to 
issue  a  single  order.  But  the  British  took 
charge  of  the  gendarmerie  training  school  at 
Salonika,  and  in  this  manner  succeeded  in 
working  wonders  with  the  recruits,  and  thereby 
benefiting  the  gendarmerie  throughout  the 
sectors. 

This  gendarmerie  reform  scheme  had  tre- 
mendous political  and  military  consequences, 
and  was,  indeed,  the  spark  which  kindled  the 
amazing  Young  Ttu-k  Revolution  of  1908.  The 
presence  of  European  officers  and  the  forcible 
imposition  of  reform  from  without  were  in- 
supportable mortifications  to  the  Turks  and 
established  in  the  army  a  bitter  hatred  of  the 
corrupt  Hamidian  rule  at  Yildiz  Kiosk,  which 
by  its  feeble  tjTanny  was  exposing  the  Empire 
to  a  long  series  of  humiliations.     The  smartness 


A    TURKISH    OFFICER    WITH    BEDOUIN    SOLDIERS. 


»;(i 


THH    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


TURKISH    SOLDIERS     GROSSING    THE 
EUPHRATES. 

of  the  gen»larmerie  force  under  foreign  officers, 
although  their  authority  was  hampered  at  every 
turn,  was  the  most  striking  demonstration  of 
the  Turkish  Government's  ineptitude.  The 
contrast  between  the  condition  of  the  gen- 
darmerie luider  foreign  officers  and  of  the 
unpaid,  ragged  army  under  their  own  shiftless 
rulers  was  a  very  unpalatable  one  for  both 
officers  and  men.  There  was  also  a  conviction 
among  the  Turks  in  INIacedonia,  more  parti- 
cularly at  Salonika,  that  the  Sultan's  handling 
of  the  Macedonian  question  would  inevitably 
end  in  the  loss  of  the  whole  of  European 
Turkey.  The  meeting  between  King  Edward 
and  the  Tsar  at  Reval,  in  June,  1908,  when 
Macedonia  \Aas  the  subject  of  discussion  and 
Russia  and  Great  Britain  agreed  upon  the 
necessity  of  imposing  a  much  more  drastic 
reform  scheme,  brought  to  a  climax  the  anxieties 
of  the  Young  Turks  for  the  future,  and  in  the 
following  July  they  struck  their  blow. 

It  was  in  this  Revolution  that  the 
much-discussed  Enver  Pasha,  later  to  become 
Minister  of  War,  made  his  first  public  appear- 
ance. It  is  commonly  but  inaccurately 
.supposed  that  he  received  his  education 
abroad,  and  he  is  often  referred  to  as  a 
product  of  German  training.  It  is,  however,  a 
fact  that  until  he  took  up  his  post  as  military 
attache  in  Berlin  after  the  Yoimg  Turk  Revo- 
lution Enver  hnd  not  been  in  Western  Europe 


at  all.  He  w!i.s  bom  and  educated  in  Con- 
stantinople, and  wa,s  a  product  of  the  Con- 
stantinople military  school.  He  later  learnt  to 
speak  and  write  both  (ierman  and  English, 
but  in  1908  his  only  foreign  language  was 
French.  When  the  Young  Turks  formed  a 
secret  committee  at  Salonika  in  1905,  Major 
Enver  Bey,  who  was  then  stationed  in  Mace- 
donia and  was  an  A.D.C.  to  Hilmi  Pasha,  the 
Inspector-General  of  the  Macedonian  vilayets, 
threw  in  his  lot  with  the  committee,  which 
concentrated  all  its  forces  upon  a  projiaganda  in 
t!ic  arm}'.  It  saw  plainly  that  a  Constitution 
could  be  wrung  from  the  Sultan  only  by  force, 
and  it  conceived  a  plan  for  a  general  strike  of 
the  troops  upon  some  very  critical  occasion. 
The  Third  Army  Corps,  which  was  stationed 
both  in  Macedonia  and  in  the  vilayet  of 
Smyrna,  was  the  special  field  of  its  operations, 
and  the  propaganda  spread  like  wildfire  among 
the  officers.  Small  local  committees  were 
formed  wherever  there  was  a  garrison  of  any 
kind.  An  infinity  of  trouble  was  lavished 
upon  this  secret  society.  Books  could  only 
be  smuggled  in  with  great  difficulty,  and  officers 
sat  up  at  night  stud3dng  these  perilous  works, 
ransacking  the  literature  of  secret  societies 
and  the  history  of  the  French  and  other  revolu- 
tions. The  Balkans  themselves  provided  models, 
and  Prince  Ypsilanti's  Greek  Hetairia,  formed 
during  the  Greek  struggle  for  independence, 
and  the  modern  Macedonian  and  Bulgarian 
internal  organizations  w^ere  models  fertile  in 
suggestions.  A  ritual  of  signs  and  counter- 
signs was  created  and  Freemasons'  lodges  were 
also  formed.  These  mysterious  activities  natu- 
rally could  not  continue  indefinitely  without 
coming  to  the  notice  of  Abdul  Hamid's  spies, 
and  in  March,  1908,  a  series  of  raids  was  made 
and  a  Commission  was  sent  from  Constanti- 
nople to  procure  evidence  against  suspected 
persons.  vSo  widespread,  however,  had  the 
conspiracy  become  amongst  army  officers  and 
Government  officials  that  it  continued  imabated, 
and  in  the  following  Jvuie  the  Sultan  sent 
another  Commission  to  imearth  the  Young  T\irk 
leaders  at  Salonika.  One  of  the  first  to  be 
denounced  was  Enver  Bey.  In  the  paradoxical 
fashion  common  in  Tm-key  he  was  promptly 
invited  to  Constantinople  with  a  promise  of  high 
promotion  upon  his  arrival  there.  He  realized 
at  once  that  this  treacherous  offer  probably 
meant  that  his  body,  like  that  of  many  another 
conspirator  before  him,  would  be  dropped  to 
the  bottom  of    the  Bosphorus.      He    therefore 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE 


WAP 


I. 


61 


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THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


saved  himself  by  flight,  and  joined  Niazi  Bey, 
who  raised  the  flag  of  revohition  on  JuJy  3 
in  the  Resna  hills. 

In  the  subsequent  proceedings  Enver  appears 
to  have  had  no  leading  part  himself,  but  owing 
to  his  prominent  position  in  the  committee  at 
Salonika  and  to  his  having  had  the  honour  of 
being  denounced  by  Abdul  Hamid  he  was 
universally  acclaimed  as  a  hero  of  the  revo- 
lution, and  his  name  was  everywhere  coupled 
with  that  of  Niazi.  In  the  middle  of  the  night 
of  July  3  Niazi,  at  the  head  of  a  small  body  of 
Turks  from  the  88th  Regiment,  seized  the 
money  in  the  battalion  treasury,  seventy- 
five  Mauser  rifles,  and  an  ammunition  chest. 
He  distributed  the  rifles  to  his  men  and  took 
to  the  hills.  The  same  night,  at  Presba,  Lieu- 
tenant Osman  with  the  rifles  and  cartridges  of 
his  own  detachment  reached  Asiunativ,  where 
be  armed  the  villagers  and  proceeded  to  join 
Niazi.  Next  day  200  Musulmans  from  Ochrida 
and  Monastir  joined  the  little  army  and  swelled 
Niazi's  force  to  the  number  of  700.  On  the 
night  of  the  5th  the  committee  placarded  the 
town  of  Monastir  with  its  constitutional  mam'- 
festo,  and  on  the  6th  the  officers  of  the  garrison 
deserted  to  Niazi  with  their  ammunition. 

Bands  with  officers  at  their  head  visited  both 
the  Christian  and  Musulman  villages  and 
quickly  won  over  the  population.  Niazi  met 
with  no  opponents,  and  consequently  there  were 


no  casualities  except  some  a.ssa.ssinations  at 
Monastir  and  the  shooting  of  spies.  Deser- 
tions of  both  officers  and  men  in  the  gendarmerie 
increased  daily  and  the  Albanian  bands  came 
pouring  in.  Soon  the  officials  who  had  remained 
faithful  to  the  Government  had  no  forces  at 
their  disposal.  The  Young  Turk  Committee 
decided  to  make  a  demonstration  at  Ochrida, 
and  thence  march  on  Monastir.  On  July  19^ 
the  Monastir  garrison,  previously  reinforced 
by  two  battalions  from  Salonika,  was  further 
inert  ased  by  2,500  men  from  Smyrna,  but  these 
soon  showed  themselves  partisans  of  the  revo- 
lution. At  midnight  on  the  22nd  Niazi  entered 
Monastir  at  the  head  of  2,000  men,  captured 
tlie  commandant,  and  returned  with  him  to 
Ochrida.  At  noon  on  the  23rd  a  vast  cro«  d 
of  Musulmans  and  Christians,  the  troops,  the 
gendarmerie,  the  local  officials,  the  clergj', 
and  1,000  insurgents  assembled  on  the  parade 
ground  at  Monastir,  and  the  Constitution  was 
proclaimed  with  a  salvo  of  guns.  An  hour 
after  midnight,  after  many  telegraphic  messages, 
and  in  the  face  of  Niazi's  tlireat  to  march  on 
Constantinople,  the  Sultan  sent  an  ofticial 
telegram  according  the  Constitution.  At  noon 
on  Friday,  July  24,  Hilmi  Pasha  proclaimed 
tliis  somewhat  sorry  concession  from  the  steps 
of  the  Konak  at  Salonika. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  write  the  chequered 
history  of  Turkey  since  that  eventful  day,  but 


INSTRUCTION    IN    THE    USE    OF    THE    GERMAN    SERVICE    RIFLE. 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


63 


it  is  important  to  notice  that  from  that  tiine 
forth  the  army,  by  means  of  which  the  Young 
Turks  came  to  power,  remained  the  dominating 
factor  in  Turkish  politics,  and  it  never  escaped 
from  the  mastership  of  the  small  Salonika 
group.  Within  the  conamittee  itself  there 
arose  many  feuds  and  factions,  but  a  rump 
ever  remained,  the  principal  members  of  which 
were  Enver  Pasha,  Talaat  Bey,  Djemal  Pasha, 
and,  for  a  long  time,  Djavid  Bey. 

At   first   it   was   the   role   of    the   committee 
to  play  the  part  of  the  power  behind  the  throne, 
and  to  put  forward  elder  statesmen  as  their 
puppets.     None   of   the   members   took   office, 
and  Enver  Bey  disappeared  to  Berlin  as  MiUtary 
Attache.     When   the  counter-revolution  came, 
in  March,   1909,  he  hurried  back  to  Salonika 
and  once  more  figm-ed  in  the  Umelight  beside 
Mahmoud    Shevket    Pasha,    when    the    latter 
made  his  triumphal  march  to  Constantinople, 
suppressed     the     counter-revolution,    deposed 
Abdul  Hamid,  and  put  the  present  Sultan  on 
the    throne.     After    this    success    the    Young 
Turks  to  a  certain  extent  modified  their  policy, 
and  a  few  of  their  own  members  accepted  the 
responsibility  of  office,  but  in  a  large  measure 
they    followed    their    previovis    procedure    of 
acting   as   an   irresponsible   and   secret   jiinta, 
outside  of   the   Government  which   they   con- 
trolled.    Enver,     despite     ambition,     declared 
by  many  to  be  his  principal  failing,  still  re- 
frained from  pressing  his  claims,  and  returned 
to  his  post  at  Berlin,  from  which  in  the  spring 
of    1910   he   paid  a  visit   to   London.     In  the 
autiunn  of   1911  Italy  suddenly  declared  war 
and    Enver    Bey    hurried    to    Tripoli,    where, 
during  the   later  stages   of   the   campaign,   he 
endeavoured  to   organize   the   Arab   resistance 
to   the   Italian   arms.     A   year   later   Turkey, 
menaced  by  the  Balkan  League,  patched  up 
a  hasty  peace  with  Italy  at  Ouchy,  just  before 
the  outbreak  of  the  Balkan  war.     Enver  was 
still  in  Tripoli,  and  so  swift  were  the  blows  of 
the  Balkan  Allies  and  so  difficult  did  he  find 
his    return    to    Constantinople — he     is    stated 
to  have  crossed  Egypt  in  disguise — that  he  was 
unable  to  take  any  part  in  the  autumn  fighting, 
thereby  escaping  the   odiiun   of  any  share  in 
a  disastrous  campaign.     When  the  first  Balkan 
Conference  met  in  London  in  1913  Enver,  who 
was   then   at   Constantinople,   directed   all   his 
energy  to  preventing  any  peace  which  should 
involve  the  cession  of  the  beleaguered  city  of 
Adrianople  to  the  Bulgars.     When  the  Turkish 
Government  finally  made  up  its  mind  to  this 


tNVER    PASHA, 
Minister  of  War. 

sacrifice  he  appeared  at  the  Ministry  of  War 
at  the  head  of  a  crowd  of  demonstrators,  and 
in  the  tumult  that  followed  Nazim  Pasha,  the 
Commander-in-Chief,  was  shot,  apparently 
by  Enver's  own  hand.  The  generally-accepted 
version  is  that  Enver  was  fired  upon  by  some- 
one standing  directly  beliind  Nazim,  and  that 
drawing  his  revolver  vipon  his  assailant,  he 
shot  the  former  by  mistake.  The  E  n  per  or 
William,  at  the  time,  spoke  openly  of  Enver 
as  an  "  assassin." 

In  any  case  the  immediate  object  of  Enver 
was  achieved.  Tlie  Ministry  of  Kiamil  Pasha 
was  ejected  from  oflice  and  Mahmovid  Shevket 
Pasha  became  Grand  Vizier  and  Minister  of  War. 
This  coup  d'etat  took  place  on  January  24, 
1913.  Mahmoud  and  Enver  gave  Nazim  a 
military  funeral,  at  which  they  appeared  as 
principal  moiu-ners.  The  Turkisii  Government 
refused  to  cede  Adrianople,  negotiations  in 
London  broke  down,  and  the  second  campaign 
began.  This  brought  no  credit  to  the  Die- 
Hard  Party,  for  Adrianople  fell,  and  when 
peace  was  signed  in  London  the  Turks  had  to 
agree  to  the  loss  of  the  fortress  and  to  accept 


<>4 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


PIGKHT    OF    TURKISH    MARINES. 


the  Enos-Midia  frontier  line.  When;  how- 
ever, the  Balkan  League  broke  up  and  Bul- 
garia came  to  blows  with  her  former  allies, 
Servia  and  Greece,  while  Roumania  marched 
almost  to  the  gates  of  Sofia,  Enver  seized  the 
chance  presented  to  him,  and  at  the  head  of  a 
Turkish  army  recaptured  Adrianople.  There 
was  no  one  to  eject  them,  and  by  the  treaty  of 
Bukarost  Turkey  was  allowed  to  retain  Adrian- 
ople. In  June,  1913,  just  before  these  events, 
Mahmoud  Shevket  Pasha  was  assassinated  as  an 
act  of  vengeance  for  the  murder  of  Nazim.  and 
Enver  became  Minister  of  War,  with  the  rank  of 
Pasha.  Prince  Said  Halim,  Minister  for  Foreign 
Affairs,  was  made  Grand  Vizier,  and  still 
retained  both  posts  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war. 
As  has  already  been  said,  the  Young  Turks' 
was  essentially  a  military  revolution,  and  it 
was  natiu"al  that  the  new  party  in  power  should 
concern  itself  with  the  question  of  army 
reform.  Abdul  Hamid  first  brought  Von  der 
Goltz  Pasha  to  Turkey,  and  under  the  old 
reghne  Germany  was  already  the  model  for  the 
army.  The  Young  Turks  applied  to  Great 
Britain  for  naval  reorganizers  and  to  Germany 
for  their  army  reformers.  A  military  mission, 
consisting  of  some  twenty  German  officers, 
arrived  in  1909  and  set  to  work,  but  their 
efforts  were  severely  hindered  by  the  political 
unrest,  by  successive  rebellions  in  Albania,  and 
finally  by  the  Turco-Italian  and  Balkan  Wars. 
The  culminating  disaster  of  the  Balkan  War  did 
not,  however,  diminish  the  determination  of  the 


Young  Turks  to  proceed  with  army  reform  on 
German  lines.  Enver  Pasha  redoubled  his 
efforts,  and  in  the  autumn  of  1913  the  German 
military  mission  was  very  much  increased  and 
further  powers  were  conferred  upon  its  new 
head,  General  Liman  von  Sanders.  Germany 
accepted  the  invitation  to  undertake  this  new 
responsibility  without  any  reference  to  the 
other  Powers,  and  when  the  facts  became 
known  considerable  dissatisfaction  was  ex- 
pressed. M.  Sazonoff,  the  Russian  Foreign 
Minister,  was  particularly  indignant,  because  he 
had  liimself  paid  a  visit  to  Berlin  and  discussed 
the  field  of  international  relations  with  the 
German  Chancellor  at  the  very  moment  when 
Germany  had  accepted  the  Tiu-kish  invitation, 
yet  Herr  von  Bethmann-HoUweg  had  never 
mentioned  the  matter  to  him.  Russia  accord- 
ingly made  a  formal  protest,  which  was  met  by 
German  assurances  of  the  irmocuous  chtu-acter 
of  the  German  mission,  but  in  reality  Liman 
Pasha  became  mihtary  dictator  of  Constanti- 
nople, a  city  where  martial  law  had  reigned 
constantly  for  six  years.  The  42  officers  with 
which  he  began  his  mission  grew  to  an  inxmensely 
greater  number.  The  Turkish  War  Office  was 
entirely  under  their  control,  and  no  important 
interview  could  take  place  without  the  presence 
of  a  German  officer,  nor  could  any  contract  be 
signed  without  his  approval.  Scores  of  Germans 
were  distributed  amongst  the  various  com- 
mands, and  the  Turkish  Minister  of  War  was 
apparently  the  willing  instrument  of  a  definite 


THE     T1ME>^    Hl;STURY     OF     THE    WAR, 


65- 


attempt  to  make  the  Turkish  Army  simply 
and  solely  a  weapon  at  the  disposal  of  the 
Kaiser's  Great  General  Staff.  For  the  first  time 
in  history  we  had  the  spectacle  of  the  Turk 
yielding  up  authority  fully  and  freely  to  a 
foreigner.  In  face  of  all  the  past  experience 
of  many  able  soldiers — English,  J^^rench,  and 
others — it  would,  in  any  case,  have  been  safe  to 
predict  that  no  such  experiment  could  work 
duccessfully,  that  however  wholehearted  in  his 
German  allegiance  Enver  Pasha  might  be,  the 
Turkish  Army  and  the  Turkish  people  could  not 
be  counted  upon  to  follow  his  example,  and  that 
the  German  exercise  of  authority  could  only 
work  with  tremendous  friction  and  with  poor 
success.  But  there  is  no  longer  any  need  to 
make  predictions  in  the  matter,  for  much 
testimony  has  been  forthcoming  that  the 
German  officers  were  regarded  with  jealousy 
and  suspicion  by  those  in  high  places,  were 
detested  and  despised  by  the  rank  and  file  of 
the  army  and  the  mass  of  the  Turkish  people, 
and  had  to  contend  against  all  the  obstacles 
which  Oriental  apathy,  ill-will,  and  capacity  for 
deliberate  obstruction  could  contrive  to  put  in 
their  way.  They  had,  on  the  other  hand,  a 
thorough  knowledge  of  their  work,  and  strong 
determination,  but  they  were  utterly  lacking  in 
that  experience  of  Musulman  countries  and 
that  talent  for  the  handling  of  native  troops  and 
tor  colonial  soldiering  which  stood  Englishmen 


and   Frenchmen    in    s-uch    good   stead   in    the 
past. 

It  is  not  unconomon  to  hear  the  suggestion 
made  that  the  Turkish  Army  had  greatly 
decreased  in  efficiency  since  the  advent  of  the 
Yoting  Turks  to  power,  and  many  people 
supposed  that  in  Abdul  Hamid's  time  it  would 
have  proved  superior  to  the  armies  of  the 
Balkan  League.  But  this  assiunption  must  not 
be  made  too  lightly.  The  Turks  were  once  a 
great  conquering  race,  of  whom  all  Europe 
stood  in  awe,  and  we  cannot  forget  that  in  the 
seventeenth  century  they  were  at  the  gates  of 
Vienna.  But  the  qualities  of  generalship  and 
leadership  on  land  and  of  seamanship  on  sea 
deserted  them,  and  the  nineteenth  century 
witnessed  a  progressive  and  obvious  decay. 
The  fighting  qualities  of  the  Turk  remained  and 
appeared  to  suffer  no  eclipse,  but  he  was  no 
longer  led  or  cared  for,  and  though  we  foimd 
the  Turks  brave  allies  in  the  Crimean  War, 
courage  and  patience  were  the  only  military 
virtues  they  possessed.  In  the  Russo-Turkish 
War  of  1877-78  it  was  the  same  story.  The 
Russians  had  to  cross  two  tremendous  obstacles 
— the  Danube  River  and  the  Balkan  Moiuitains 
— and  it  was  in  stubborn  defence,  assisted  bj- 
these  great  barriers,  and  in  the  trenches  at 
Plevna,  that  the  qualities  of  the  Turkish  soldier 
were  displayed ;  but  there  were  no  signs  of 
generalship  and  there  was  nothing  worthy  of 


TURKISH    ARllLLEKY. 


66 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


the  name  of  organization.  Even  in  the  Greek 
War  of  1897,  although  for  the  most  part  the 
Turks  had  no  enemy  in  front  of  them,  they 
advanced  with  extraordinary  slowness.  After 
this,  year  by  year,  the  condition  of  the  army 
grew  worse.  It  had  neither  pay,  uniform,  nor 
commissariat.  The  infantry  got  no  musketry 
training  and  the  artillery  had  no  ammunition 
for  their  guns.  When  the  Revolution  of  1908 
came,  an  attempt  was  made  to  reform  the  army, 
hut  there  was  no  time  before  the  crisis  arose. 
There  were  two  rebellions  in  Albania  to  be 
suppressed,  as  well  as  an  Arab  revolt ;  then 
came  the  war  with  Italy,  and  lastly  the  life-and- 
death  struggle  against  the  Balkan  League. 
No  country  had  ever  been  in  a  strategic  position 
at  all  comparable  to  that  of  Bulgaria  for  striking 
a  quick  blow  at  Turkey,  and  in  a  war  with 
Turkey  time  is  the  essence  of  the  matter. 
Unlike  the  Russians  in  1878,  the  Bulgarians  had 
to  cross  neither  the  Danube  nor  the  Balkaas. 
The  Bulgarian  Army  was  universally  admitted 
to  be  a  most  efficient  fighting  instrument.  It 
had  been  trained  and  disciplined  for  one  object 
and  one  object  only — to  fight  the  Turk  ;  and 
every  Bulgarian  soldier  believed  in  his  heart 
that  the  day  of  that  fight  would  come.  The 
Turks  had  an  excellent  plan  of  campaign  ready, 
which  had  been  prepared  for  them  by  the 
Germans  ;  but  it  is  one  thing  to  have  a  good 
plan  of  campaign  provided  by  someone  else  and 
another  thing  to  have  the  generalship  to  carry 
it  out.  Abdulla  Pasha,  the  Commander-in- 
Cliief,  failed  in  1912  against  the  Bulgars  in 
Thrace  precisely  as  Enver  Pasha  failed  in  1915 
against  the  Russians  in  the  Caucasus.  The  plan 
which  had  been  the  inadequately  concealed 
[purpose  of  the  Turkish  army  manoeuvres  of 
1909  and  1910  was  fathomed  by  the  Bulgars, 
and  miscarried  hopelessly,  being  in  any  case 
put  out  of  court  by  the  slowness  with  which 
Abdulla  developed  his  offensive  towards  Kirk 
Kilisse.  But  it  is  probably  true,  as  General 
Savoff  and  the  Bulgarian  Staff  themselves 
stated,  that  the  Turldsh  officers  were  superior, 
the  men  better  fed,  better  clad  and  better 
trained,  and  their  war  stores  and  equipment  of 
every  kind  more  complete  at  the  outbreak  of 
the  Balkan  War  than  they  had  been  for  some 
years.  It  is,  however,  possible,  although  in 
1912  the  Turkish  soldier  showed  liimself  by  no 
means  devoid  of  his  old  qualities,  that  the  Young 
Turk    Revolution,   the     deposition    of    Abdul 


Hamid,  and  the  spread  of  hberal  ideas  and 
"  free  thought,"  had  lessened  his  simple  faith 
in,  and  self-sacrificing  subordination  to,  the 
powers  above  him,  more  especially  the  officers 
who  led  him.  From  the  Balkan  War  the 
Turkish  Army  emerged  manifestly  weakened, 
but,  as  has  been  indicated,  much  energy  was 
afterwards  spent  upon  it.  We  may  take  it  that 
General  Liman  von  Sanders  and  his  Staff  had, 
at  any  rate,  given  most  excellent  advice  as  far 
as  organization  goes,  and  had  taught  strategy 
on  sovmd  principles.  But  possibly  thej--  mada 
too  little  allowance  for  local  conditions  and  for 
Turkish  characteristics,  and  in  any  caso. 
however  admirable  their  efforts,  we  may  take 
it  that  they  were  hampered  at  every  turn  by  a 
personnel  none  too  honest,  none  too  efficient, 
and  none  too  earnest.  It  would  be  a  inistake, 
however,  not  to  assmne  that  the  Turkish 
infantry  would,  as  always,  fight  well,  and  in 
particular  it  could  be  relied  upon  for  a  stubborn 
defence.  The  Turks  had  always  sho^vn  great 
skill  in  entrenching  quickly  and  ingeniously, 
and  the  tactics  employed  in  1914-15  on  both 
sides  in  Flanders,  for  instance,  were  eminently 
suited  to  the  Turkish  miUtary  genius.  The 
Turkish  gunners,  on  the  other  hand,  were  not 
remarkable  for  their  skill,  since  they  got  no 
special  practice,  and  the  Turkish  cavalry  had 
few  modem  triumphs  to  its  credit. 

The  latest  estimate  of  the  total  peace  strength 
of  the  army  in  1915  was  17,000  officers,  250,000 
men,  45,000  horses,  1,500  guns,  and  400  machine 
guns.  Under  the  army  scheme  in  operation 
since  the  Balkan  War  there  were  nominally 
four  army  inspections.  The  first  had  the  1st, 
2nd,  3rd  and  4th  army  corps,  with  headquarters 
at  Constantinople,  Rodosto,  Kirk  Kilisse  and 
Adrianople  ;  the  second  army  inspection  con- 
tained the  8th  corps  at  Damascus  and  the 
5th  and  6th  corps  at  centres  undetermined. 
All  the  above  had  their  complement  of  three 
divisions.  The  third  army  inspection  was  at 
Erzingliian,  and  included  the  9th,  10th  and  11th 
army  corps  at  Erzrlim,  Erzingliian  and  Van 
respectively.  Of  these  the  10th  corps  had  three 
divisions,  but  the  9th  and  11th  two  only.  The 
4th  army  inspection  was  at  Bagdad,  and 
included  the  12th  army  corps  at  Mosul  and  the 
13th  at  Bagdad.  They  had  two  divisions. 
Lastly,  there  were  the  independent  14th  corps, 
with  three  divisions  at  Sanaa,  Hodeida  and 
Ebka,  and  the  Hedjaz  division. 


CHAPTER  LI. 

THE  OUTBREAK  OF  WAR  AND  THE 
CAMPAIGN  IN  THE  CAUCASUS. 

War  Strength  of  the  Army — Fields  of  Operations — The  Caucasus  Frontier — Tims — 
Difficulties  of  a  Winter  Campaign — The  Turkish  Advance — Concentration — German 
Strategy — Nature  of  the  Offensive— Envelopment  Foiled — The  Russian  Victory — 
Sarikamish — Russian  Naval  Success — The  Persian  Frontier — Turks  Occupy  Tabriz — 
Russians  Relieve  Tabriz. 


WHEX  the  European  crisis  developed 
cat  the  end  of  July,  1914,  the 
Turks  immediately  began  mobili- 
zation. This  proceeded  with  ex- 
treme slowness,  but  by  the  end  of  October, 
when  Turkey  herself  joined  in  the  European 
conflict,  it  was  estimated  by  The  Times  Military 
Correspondent  that  there  were  some  500,000 
more  or  less  trained  men  in  the  Army,  and 
another  250,000  trained  men  at  the  depots. 
The  army  corps  were  distributed  as  follows. 
At  and  near  Constantinople  were  the  1st, 
3rd,  and  5th  Army  Corps,  and  a  portion  of 
the  6th.  There  were  also  the  Bosphorus 
Defence  Troops,  three  or  four  cavalry  brigades, 
some  Kurdish  levies,  and  a  few  depot  troops. 
In  all  some  200,000  men  may  have  been  in 
the  Constantinople  district.  In  Thrace  there 
were  the  2nd  and  most  of  the  6th  Corps,  with 
three  cavalry  brigades  and  frontier  guards  ; 
these  were  distributed  between  Adrianoplc, 
Dimotika,  and  Kirk  Kilisse.  At  Smyrna 
part  of  the  4th  Army  Corps  remained,  but  the 
bulk  of  it  was  concentrated  at  Panderma. 

In  Palestine  the  8th  Corps  was  at  its  full 
strength  of  some  40,000,  plus  numerous  Arab 
irregular  corps  and  cavalry. 


It  is  worth  while  to  pause  here  and  examine 
the  object  of  this  military  distribution.  In 
Europe  the  Tui'ks  still  retained  territory  in 
Tlirace  as  far  as  the  Balkans  in  the  north, 
and  the  towns  of  Adrianople,  Dimotika,  and 
Rodosto  in  the  north  and  west.  Tliis  was  but  a 
remnant  of  the  former  Tiu-key  in  Europe, 
and  in  a  military  sense  it  was,  as  has  been  said, 
little  more  than  a  elacis  to  the  famous  lines  of 
Tchataldja,  which  defend  Constantinople  on  the 
landward  side.  Both  before  and  after  the 
Balkan  War  the  main  mass  of  the  Turkish  troops 
had  been  kept  in  Eiu-ope  with  the  object  of 
defending  the  capital,  and  also  because  it  was 
the  bvirning  desire  of  the  Young  Turks  to 
regain  the  territory'  which  Turkey  lost  m  the 
last  war.  The  second  group  of  troops  was  in 
the  Caucasus,  directed  against  Russia,  while 
the  third  group  was  concentrated  in  Sj-ria 
and  on  the  borders  of  Egj-pt.  So  long  as 
Bulgarian  neutrality  could  bo  counted  upon 
the  immediate  task  of  the  Turkish  Army  was 
in  the  Caucasus.  The  Oth,  10th,  and  11th 
Corps  were,  by  the  begimiing  of  November, 
brought  up  to  tliree  divisions,  and  each  division 
to  a  strength  of  ten  l)at  tnlions  There  were  also 
three  brigades  of  cavalry,  and,  in  addition,  the 


67 


68 


Till':     TIMKS    HISTORY     OF     THE 


WAR. 


DJAVID    BEY, 
Turkish  Minister  of  Finance. 

tribal  horse  was  called  out  and  partisans 
raised  on  the  Persian  frontier  for  a  raid  into 
Persia. 

As  Turkey  entered  the  fray  at  the  beginning 
of  November  it  was  generally  believed  that  no 
exterusive  military  operations  could  be  under- 
taken immediately  in  the  Caucasus,  and  that 
the  real  campaign  must  be  postponed  tintil  the 
spring  of  1915.  With  a  long  and  arduous 
desert  march  before  her  towards  Egypt;  where 
the  Suez  Canal  and  all  the  other  conditions 
piled  difficulty  upon  difficulty,  with  Bulgaria 
and  Greece  still  neutral,  with  the  Russian 
frontier  buried  in  snow,  with  the  navy  unable 
to  take  the  open  sea  and  incapable  of  more 
than  Black  Sea  raids,  it  looked  as  if  Turkey's 
participation  in  the  war  would  be  for  months 
to  come  of  little  more  than  a  nominal  kind. 
In  all  of  the  numerous  previous  campaigns 
against  Russia  winter  had  checked  the  opera- 
tions in  the  Caucasus.  It  must  be  set  down  a-s 
a  testimony  to  the  energy  and  determination 
of  the  Turks  under  their  German  leaders  that, 
contrary  to  general  expectation,  they  refused 
to  let  winter  pass  without  putting  forth  all 
their  strength  and  did  not  fear  to  face  the 
unspeakable  horrors  of  a  mid-winter  campaign 
in  those  frozen  snow-bound  heights.  The 
Caucasian  frontier  is,  indeed,  of  vast  importance 
to   Turkey.     Between   herself   and   Egypt   she 


has  a  desert  barrier  and  far  to  the  south-east, 
in  Mesopotamia,  she  was  probably  unprepared 
for  the  swiftness  with  wliich  the  British  sent 
an  expedition  from  the  Persian  Gulf  to  the 
Tigris.  But  in  the  Caucasus  she  is  for  ever 
face  to  face  with  her  ancient  enemy,  and  when 
the  fatal  decision  to  make  war  was  taken  in 
Constantinople,  evei-y  Turk  knew  well  that, 
whether  in  the  winter  or  the  spring,  a  desjwrate 
struggle  must  come  between  the  Sultan's  ho.sts 
and  the  might  of  Russia.  Doubtless  Germany 
hoped  and  believed  that  by  an  imrnerliate 
vigorous  Turkish  offensive  in  the  (Auicasus 
Russia  could  be  forced  to  detach  considerable 
bodies  of  troop'^  from  the  Polish  theatre  of 
war,  and  thus  relieve  the  ))ressure  upon  herself 
or  Austria,  but  the  Russians  were  fully  prepared 
for  Turkey,  whose  hand  had  been  only  too 
plainly  shown  from  the  very  development 
of  the  European  crisis.  The  Russian  Army  in 
the  Caucasus  stood  fast  at  its  post,  and  when 
Turkey  declared  war  it  was  not  thought  neces- 
sary to  transfer  a  single  man  from  the  Polisli 
front. 

There  had  been  many  alterations  in  the 
Russo-Turkish  frontier  in  the  Caucasus,  but 
the  wide  isthmus  between  the  Black  Sea  and 
the  Caspian  was  still  the  inevitable  theatre  of 
war.  Here  Russia's  southern  frontier  marched 
successively  with  Turkey  and  with  Persia  along 
a  line  that  moved  in  a  south-easterly  direction 
from  the  Black  Sea  to  the  Caspian.  The  Russo- 
Turkish  frontier  was  a  mountain  wall  runninir 
from  the  Black  Sea  on  the  west  to  the  great 
bulwark  of  Ararat  on  the  east.  At  its  western 
end  there  is  a  passage  by  the  sea  that  may 
be  compared  to  the  road  on  the  Franco-Spanish 
frontier  which  lies  between  the  Western 
Pyrenees  and  the  angle  of  the  Bay  of  Biscay. 
The  rest  is  a  confused  mountain  wall  dropping 
down  through  great  ravines  and  climbing 
up  again  to  ^Ararat.  The  Russo  -  Persian 
frontier,  which  followed  on,  ran  through  very 
level  country  along  the  course  of  the  great 
riv  er  Araxes  to  the  Caspian.  The  great  Russian 
town  of  the  Caucasus  is  the  beautiful  city  of 
Tiflis,  the  old  Georgian  capital.  Here  was  the 
half-way  house  between  Batouin  on  the  Black 
Sea  and  Baku  on  the  Caspian,  while  north- 
wards from  Tiflis  ran  a  road  and  the  new  rail- 
way over  the  Vladikafkas  Pass  into  Russia 
proper.  Southward  runs  another  railway, 
through  the  great  fortress  of  Kars  to  a  railhead 
at  Sarikamish,  close  to  the  Turkish  frontier.  At 
Alexandropol  there  is  a  bifurcation  and  a  railway 


■THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE     WAR. 


69 


runs  eastward  through  Erivan  to  ,hilt'a  on  the 
Persian  Frontier.  The  Kars  raihvay  runs 
through  high  mountain  ridges,  and  south  of 
it  there  is  a  succession  of  peaks  chniljing  up 
to  the  Armenian  plateau  on  the  Turkish  .side. 
Sarikamish  itself  is  6,000  ft.  vip,  and  beyond.it 
are  heights  10,000  and  11,000  ft.  above  the 
sea.  There  are  no  roads  anywhere  except 
across  great  heights,  which  in  tlie  winter  are 
buried  in  snow. 

A  few  days  after  the  first  Turkish  raid  on 
the  Black  Sea  coast  the  Russian  troops  crossed 
the  Turkish  frontier  and,  after  various  skir- 
mishes with  advance  bodies  of  Turkish  troops, 
captiu"ed  a  position  close  to  Kojirukeui.  on  the 
road  to  Erzrum  ;  but  on  November  1 3  they 
were  compelled  to  fall  back  before  superior 
forces  ;  reinforcements,  however,  came  up, 
and  after  three  days'  fighting  the  Russians  were 
once  inore  in  possession  of  Koprukeui  by  Xovenn- 
ber  20.  This  initial  Russian  success,  however, 
was  but  a  demonstration,  and  not  an  advance 
in  force.  Transcaucasia  was  to  Russia  but 
a  secondary  theatre  of  war,  and  her  general 
policy  was  to  act  upon  the  defensive  during 
the  winter  months.  The  Turks,  however,  had 
no  intention  of  remaining  on  the  defensive,  and 
at  the  end  of  November  thej^  began  to  develop 
an  advance.  As  has  already  been  said,  the 
9th,  10th  and  11th  Army  Corps  had  a  month 
previously     been     concentrated      at      Erzrum. 


SHUKRI  PASHA, 
one  of  the  Turkish  Commanders  in  the  Caucasus. 


Erzrum  was  Turkey's  most  important  fortified 
place  in  Asia,  and  corresponded  to  Atlrianople 
on  her  European  frontier. 

The  Russian  concentration  had  taken  place 
at  Kars,  and  it  is  important  to  note  well  these 
two  frontier  strongholds,  as  it  is  between  them 


TURKISH    CAVALRY. 


70 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


that  tlio  hulk  of  tlie  rarly  fighting  took  i)lace. 
The  intervening  distance  is  over  100  miles. 
Hotii  are  situated  some  6,000  feet  above  the 
^sea,  and  tiio  mountain  road  between  them 
rises  considerably  liiglier.  The  whole  inter- 
vening co'uitry  is  a  tangle  of  mountain  ridges 
and  high  snow-swept  valleys.  The  plan  pre- 
pared by  the  Germans  for  the  Turks  was  the 
plan  which  is  dearest  of  all  to  the  heart  of  the 
German  General  Staff,  Here  they  proposed  to 
repeat  \\ith  the  Turks  the  procedure  which 
von  Kluck  had  followed  against  the  French 
and  English  armies  in  France,  and  von  Hindor- 
biu-g  against  tiie  Russians  before  Warsaw,  and 
attempt  the  envelopment  of  the  enemy.  The 
Germans  assumed,  and  rightly  assumed,  that 
the  Russians  would  move  forward  their  main 
army  by  the  road  from  Kars  to  Erzrum,  for, 
except  on  the  Persian  side,  it  is  the  only  avenue 
for  large  masses  of  troops,  and,  moreover,  the 
railhead  at  Sarikamish  vipon  this  road  was  not 
more  than  15  miles  from  the  Turkish  frontier. 
To  engage  and  hold  the  Russians  on  the 
Erzrum  road  with  the  11th  Turkish  Army 
Corps,  and  at  the  same  time  to  send  round 
columns  on  the  left  for  an  enveloping  attack 
against  Kars  and  the  Russian  right  flank,  was 


the  essence  of  tlie  German  plan.  In  order  to 
carry  it  out  successfully  it  was  clearly  necessary 
that  Enver  Pasha  i-hould  dispose  of  more 
troops  than  the  enemy.  The  37th  Division 
of  the  13th  Bagdad  Corps  was  brought  up 
to  strengthen  the  11th  against  the  Russian 
front,  and  a  portion  of  the  Iht  Army  Corjis  was 
brought  by  sea  f  i  om  Constantinople  to  Trebizond, 
to  advance  from  the  coast  again.=t  Ardahan 
and  complete  the  extreme  Turkish  left  in  the 
enveloping  movement  upon  the  Russians.  It 
may  be  estimated,  therefore,  that  Enver  Pasha 
disposed  of  more  than  150,000  men,  while  the 
Russian  forces  were  probably  at  most  100,000. 
The  11th  Corps,  as^sisted  by  a  division  of  Arab 
soldiers  from  the  13th  Corps,  was  to  contain 
the  Russians  from  Koprukeui,  while  the  1 0th  and 
9th  wheeled  on  its  left  to  the  line  from  Olty 
and  Id  to  Koprukeui.  The  10th  concentrated  at 
Id,  and  the  9th  fell  into  place  in  the  centre. 
Meanwhile  far  to  the  n(  rth  anotheu  force,  a 
portion  of  the  1st  Corps,  moved  on  Ardahan, 
with  Kars  and  the  cutting  of  the  railway  t  ehind 
the  Russians  as  its  ultimate  objective. 

When  the  Turkish  offensive  began  the  11th 
Corps  pushed  the  Russians  back  towards 
Khorosan,   which  is  about   30  miles  south  of 


TURKISH    EMISSARIES    IN    BERLIN. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAF. 


7J 


TURKISH    CAVALRY. 


Sarikamish  and  held  it  tlirough  heavy  fighting 
in  Christmas  week.  Meantime  the  9th  and  10th 
Corps  were  struggUng  through  icy  winds  and 
deep  snow  at  tremendous  altitudes  through  the 
moimtains,  and  reached  but  did  not  enter 
Sarikamish  on  Christmas  Day.  The  1st  Corps, 
coming  from  the  valley  of  the  Chorok  river, 
crossed  a  mountain  pass  8,000  feet  up  and  bear- 
ing down  upon  Ardahan  drove  out  a  small 
Russian  force  of  some  4,000  strong  on  January  1 . 
It  will  thus  be  seen  that  with  the  Russian  front 
checked  at  Khorosan,  with  the  Saganuk  heights 
at  Sarikamish  occupied  by  the  9th  Turkish 
Corps,  the  10th  fiercely  attacking  the  railway 
just  beyond  it,  and  the  Ist  in  occupation  of 
Ardahan,  this  extraordinarily  ambitious  scheme 
of  envelopment  came  comparatively  near 
success,  in  spite  of  the  difficulties  of  carrying 
out  a  concerted  occupation  amongst  the  mass 
of  mountains  deep  in  snow,  without  roads  or 
railways,  and  with  little  possibility  of  inter- 
conununication  between  the  columns  or  of 
synchronizing  action.  In  the  end,  as  might 
have  been  expected,  these  difficulties  proved 
too  much.  The  10th  Army  Corps  was  the 
first  to  suffer.  About  the  afternoon  of  Decem- 
ber 29  it  began  to  give  way,  and  on  New  Year's 
Day  it  was  driven  right  back.  On  January  3 
the  Russians  came  up  in  force  and  drove  the 
1st  Corps  out  of  Ardahan.  With  the  10th  and 
the  1st  Corps  in  retreat  the  9th  Corps,  which 


was  still  fighting  desperately  at  SarikainLsh, 
was  completely  surrounded  and  absolutely 
wiped  out.  The  only  unbeaten  corps,  the 
11th,  could  as  yet  do  nothing  to  aid  it,  for  it 
was  fully  engaged  by  the  head  of  the  Russian 
column  at  Khorosan,  and  it  made  no  progress 
for  over  a  week.  Iskan  Pasha,  with  the  whole 
of  his  Staff,  including  the  German  officers 
attached,  and  the  11th  Corps  which  he  com- 
manded, or  such  portion  of  it  as  had  succeeded 
in  reaching  Sarikamish,  surrendered.  The 
best  resumes  of  these  operations  are  the  two 
following  official  communiques  dated 
January  6.  The  first  is  froui  the  General 
Staff  of  the  Army  in  the  Caucasus  : 

At  the  end  of  November  the  main  body  of  the 
Third  Turkish  Army  was  moved  in  the  direction  of 
the  region  to  the  east  of  Erzrum.  The  army  was 
preceded  by  two  army  corps,  witli  a  reserve  corps  near 
Hassan  Kala. 

In  accordance  with  the  plan  of  Enver  Pasha,  the 
Third  Army  was  to  operate  as  follows:  The  9th  and 
10th  Corps  wero  to  advance  iu  the  direction  of  Olty  in 
order  to  form  tho  wing  of  (ho  Tmkish  defensive,  while 
the  llth  Corps  was  ordered  to  maintain  its  pos^ition, 
which  was  strongly  organized,  and  to  draw  upon  itself, 
by  a  strategic  demonstration,  our  troops.  In  caso  the 
Russian  troops  imdcrtook  an  energetic  offensive,  the 
llth  Corps  was  ordered  to  fall  back  on  tho  fortress  of 
Erzrum,  drawing  our  forces  with  it.  Tlie  10th  Turkish 
Corps  was  to  advance  in  two  coKnnns,  the  first,  one 
division  strong,  marching  towards  Id,  through  tlie 
valley  of  tho  Olty  Chai,  while  the  second,  two  divisions 
strong,  was  to  march  on  Ardost,  through  tlio  valley  of 
S<>rvy  Chai.  The  Hth  Turkish  Army  Corps  wa-^  to 
assume  the  offensive  in  the  gap  between  tho  10th  and 
llth  Corps. 


72 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WATL 


in. 
* — . 

< 

u 
< 

U 

DC 


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u 


THE   times;  history  of   the   war. 


73 


FORT    CHANAK,    DARDANELLES. 


Our  troops  in  the  region  of  Olty,  in  spite  of  the  enemy's 
numerical  superiority,  courageously  hindered  a  Turkish 
advance,  and,  by  means  of  counter  attacks,  inflicted 
lieavy  losses  on  the  enemy. 

In  the  meanwhile,  we  ascertained  that  a  strong 
Ottoman  column,  reinforced  by  the  rebel  Musulman 
population,  was  advancing  over  the  Panjouretsk  and 
Yalanuz-Djamsh  passes  towards  Ardahan.  Our  garri- 
son, which  was  occupying  this  point,  fell  back  slightly 
after  fighting  17  days. 

The   second   communique    of   .January    0    is 

from  the  Russian  Headquarters'  Staff : 

In  the  Caucasus,  having  received  reinforcements,  we 
attacked,  on  Sunday,  the  Turkish  troops  concentrated 
at  Ardahan  and  inflicted  a  complete  defeat  on  the  enemy, 
taking  from  him  the  colours  of  the  8th  Regiment,  wliich 
formed  part  of  the  garrison  of  Constantinople. 

During  the  later  development  of  the  action  we  dis- 
covered that  the  bulk  of  the  Turkish  forces — namely, 
the  9th  and  10th  Army  Corps — had  taken  the  offensive 
against  Sarikamish.  This  movement,  undertaken  by 
mountainous  roads  covered  by  snow,  across  extremely 
steep  ridges,  was  carried  out  almost  without  supply  con- 
voys or  field  artillery,  although  the  Turkish  troops  were 
abundantly  supplied  with  war  supplies. 

The  enemy  planned  this  operation  counting  chiefly 
upon  the  sympathy  and  liberal  help  of  the  native 
Musulmans  who  had  previously  been  approached  by 
Turkish  emissaries. 

The  task  of  our  troops  was  to  check  the  largo  forces 
of  the  enemy  on  this  front  and  to  create  a  barrier  suffici- 
ently strong  to  defeat  the  9th  and  lotli  Turkish  Army 
Corps. 

In  spilo  of  the  extraordinary  dilliculty  of  this  task, 
the  rigorous  winter  weather,  and  the  necessity  of  lighting 
in  mountainous  passes  covered  with  snow  anil  at  an 
altitude  of  10,000  feet,  our  gallant  troops  of  the  Caucasus, 
after  <lesporafe  fighting,  which  lasted  over  10  days, 
brilliantly  fullillod  the  exceptional  task  which  had  fallen 
to  them. 

Having  repulsed  the  frenv.ied  attacks  of  the  Turks 
on  the  front  and  at  Sarikamish,  they  enveloped  and 
annihilated  almost  the  whole  of  two  Turkish  Army  Corps, 
taking  the  remainder  of  one  of  these  corps  prisoners, 
together  with  its  ("oininandcr-in-(-hicf,  thre(!  Divisional 
Generals,  the  Staff,  ninnerous  officers,  thousands  oi 
soldiers,  artillery,  machine-guns,  and  baggage  animals. 
Tho  intense  struggle  on  the  principal  front  naturally 


necessitated  a  change  in  the  formation  of  our  forces  in 
the  districts  of  secondary  importance,  and  the  approach 
of  certain  of  our  detachments  to  the  frontier. 

Our  trophies  cannot  yet  be  precisely  stated. 

The  pursuit  of  the  enemy  continues. 

Iskan  Pasha  himself  stated  that  he  considered 
his  defeat  mainly  due  to  the  cold  weather 
and  the  ahnost  impassable  condition  of  the 
roads.  Out  of  the  9th  Corps  only  6,000 
reached  Sarikamisli.  Here  the  Russians  engaged 
him,  and  after  six  night  attacks  he  svirrendered. 
The  prisoners,  when  captured,  were  scarcely 
able  to  stand  from  exhaustion  and  hunger. 
The  officers  were  distracted  by  the  insubordi- 
nation of  the  men,  who  threw  down  their 
rifles  and  hurried  to  the  Russians  in  order  to 
surrender.  Several  times  the  Russians  moved 
their  kitchens  up  to  the  front  line,  and  the 
Turks,  smelling  the  food,  instantly  stopped 
fighting  and  surrendered.  When  they  were  fed 
they  kissed  the  hands  of  their  captors.  Des- 
criptions of  scenes  on  the  battle-field  by  eye- 
witnesses inake  the  blood  run  cold.  Tlu> 
slaughter  was  particularly  great  on  two  heights 
with  a  slight  dip  between  them.  Here  the 
battle  had  swept  with  sucli  fury  that  it  was 
literally  impossible  to  move  vvitlioiit  treading 
on  bodies,  and  I,.")00  dead  were  left  in  this 
small  space  alone. 

It  would  appear  that  during  tlie  wonderful 
defence  of  Sarikamish  from  December  2.")  to 
December  28,  a  liaiidful  of  Russians  assumed 
the  offensive  against  an  entire  Turkisli  division 
until  reinforcements  arrived.  This  heroic  action 
alone  saved  the  town.  The  Ru.ssians  advanced 
by  a  forced  march  tliroiigli  deei)  snow,  engaging 


74 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


ADMIRAL    SAGHAN    (centre)    WITH 
HIS    STAFF. 

the  enemy  in  the  evening  about  thirteen  miles 
from  the  town. 

The  ragged,  hungry,  half -frozen  Turks  rolled 
on  in  dense  columns.  The  maclaine-gun  detach- 
ments allowed  them  to  approach  within  3t30 
paces,  and  then  literally  mowed  them  down  ; 
but  ever  new  columns  sprang  up  in  their  place. 
The  Russians  slowly  retired  eastward  step  by 
step.  The  enemy,  realizing  that  every  hour 
and  minute  was  precious  if  Sarikamish  was  to 
be  taken,  came  on  with  the  madness  of  des- 
pair, fighting  always  in  the  darliness.  The 
Turkish    columns    hurled    themselves    on    the 


slender  Russian  line,  which,  coolly  falling  back, 
sold  every  inch  of  ground  dearly. 

The  Turks,  drunk  with  fanaticism,  fired 
standing.  Thereupon  tlie  Russians  resorted 
to  the  bayonet,  and  with  ringing  cheers  charged 
home  upon  the  enemy's  masses,  inflicting 
frightful  slaughter.  The  enemy  broke  on  several 
occasions,  but  German  officers  with  loaded  re- 
volvers drove  back  defaulters  till  the  Russians, 
under  the  pressure  of  sheer  weight  of  numbers, 
were  forced  to  retreat  two  or  three  miles  from 
Sarikamish.  More  Turkish  artillery  arrived 
at  this  juncture,  but  too  late  to  claim  the 
victory  as  the  Russian  guns  were  covering 
their  own  infantry,  and  roared  forth  an  effective 
reply.  Reinforcements  poured  in  steadily,  and 
the  protracted  engagement  culminated  in  a 
brilliant  victory. 

Russian  valour  thus  vipset  the  grandiose 
plan  of  the  German  strategists  to  inflict  a 
sudden  stunning  blow  on  inferior  Russian 
forces,  envelop  the  vanguards,  rear,  and  flanks, 
emerge  by  a  forced  march  on  Sarikamish,  cut 
off  the  Russians,  overwhelm  Ardahan,  and 
advance  far  northward  from  a  direction  where 
they  were  least  expected. 

The  surrender  of  the  9th  Corps  at  Sarika- 
mish, however,  by  no  means  exhausted  the 
effort  of  the  Turks.  Although  the  11th 
Corps  had  been  unable  to  move  in  time  to  save 
the  9th,  it  made  a  gallant  effort  to  relieve  the 
pressure  upon  the  retreating  10th.  It  pressed 
on  beyond  Khorosan  and  forced  its  way  to 
Kara-Urgan,  some   twenty  miles  from  Sarika- 


THE    "MESSUDIEH,"    SU.SK    IN    THE    l^ARDANELLES    BY    SUBMARINE    Bll. 


THE     TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


75 


TABRIZ. 


inish  By  tiiis  means  the  Russians  were 
compslled  to  check  in  their  pursuit  of  the  10th 
Corps,  and  instead  of  dispatching  the  troops 
which  had  wiped  out  the  9th  on  the  heels  of 
the  10th,  they  had  to  hiu-ry  them  up  to  Kara- 
Urgan,  where  a  long  fierce  struggle  began. 
Desperate  fighting  took  place  throughout  the 
whole  of  the  second  week  in  January,  but  it  seems 
early  to  liave  turned  to  the  advantage  of  the 
Russian  troops,  who  on  the  lith  amiihilated 
with  the  baj'onet  the  whole  of  the  52nd  Regi- 
ment, with  the  exception  of  the  commander, 
staff  officers,  and  some  men,  all  of  whom  were 
made  prisoners. 

At  Yenikoi  a  battle  which  was  fought  with 
great  fierceness  for  two  days  ended  in  the  defeat 
of  a  portion  of  the  32nd  Turkish  Division, 
wliich  fled  precipitately,  after  losing  severely 
and  abandoning  two  machine  guns  and  its 
baggage  train.  In  one  cavalry  charge  alone, 
it  is  recorded  that  the  Turks  lost  300  killed  and 
woimded  by  the  sabres  of  a  regiment  of  Siberian 
Cossacks.  On  January  17  a  dispatch  from  the 
Army  in  the  Caucasus  announced  that  the 
battle  of  Kara-Urgan,  which  had  been  fought 
for  three  days  in  a  ceaseless  snowstorm,  hail 
ended  in  a  victory  for  Russia.  Thanks  to  the 
\alour  of  the  regiments  of  the  Caucasus  and 
Turkestan  and  the  Siberian  Cossacks  tlie 
resistance  of  the  enemy  was  shattered.  His 
rearguards,  which  were  covering  his  retreat, 
were  amiihilated,  the  remnants  of  tlic  Turkish 
army  harried,  and  the  flanks  and  front  put  to 
flight  towardsErzrum.     The  puisuit  was  pressed 


vigorously,  but  the  tremendous  snow  (h-ilt 
proved  a  giant  obstacle,  and  the  11th  Corps 
succeeded  in  making  good  its  escape  towards 
Erzrum.  The  Russians,  however,  harried  it  not 
only  from  the  rear  but  from  the  right  flank, 
thus  depri\ing  it  of  the  opportmiity  of  proceed- 
ing along  the  Kara-Urgan-Koprukeui  road. 
This  accoimted  for  the  heavy  fighting  west- 
ward, at  Yenikoi,  which  represented  the  last 
stand  of  the  11th  Corps. 

^Meantime    in    the    north    tlie    Russians    had 


A    TURKISH    SCRIBE    READING     IHE 
WAR   NEWi   IN   THE   BAZAAR. 


76 


THE    TIMES    HISTOm'     OF     THE    WAB. 


ARABIAN    INFANTRY    DIVISION. 


cfjiitinued  their  successes  against  tlie  1st  Corps, 
which  had  been  driven  from  Ardalian,  and 
cleared  the  whole  of  the  Chorok  valley  of  the 
enemy.  The  difficulties  of  the  Turks  were 
greatly  increased  by  the  action  of  the  Russians 
in  cutting  their  communications  by  sea.  In 
the  first  week  of  January,  almost  simultaneously 
with  the  signal  defeat  of  the  Tm-kish  land 
forces,  the  Russians  obtained  a  \-ictory  on  the 
water.  At  Sinope  a  Russian  cruiser  engaged 
the  Turkish  cruiser  Medjidieh,  which  was  con- 
voying a  Turkish  transport.  The  transport  was 
sunk  and  the  Medjidieh  fled.  On  January  G 
the  Black  Sea  Fleet  engaged  the  Breslau  and  the 
Hamidieh  and  severely  damaged  them  both, 
while  along  the  coast  a  number  of  small  Tiu-kish 
vessels  were  sunlc.  The  Ooeben  was  all  this 
time  out  of  action  ;  she  w-as  reported  to  have 
struck  a  mine  at  the  entrance  to  the  Bosphorus 
in  December  and  was  still  under  repair  at 
Constantinople.  On  Sunday,  January  1.5, 
Russian  torpedo  boats  sunk  the  large  steamer 
Georgios,  near  Sinope,  and  several  sailing  vessels 
which  were  supplying  the  Tm-kish  army  and 
fle<3t  witli  war  stores,  provisions,  and  coal. 
Before  the  destruction  of  these  boats  the  crews 
were  given  the  opportunity  to  go  ashore,  and 
those  who  remained  were  removed  and  conveyed 
to  Sebastopol. 

Such  is  the  record  of  the  main  fighting  in  the 


Caucasian  area  up  to  the  end  of  the  month  of 
January,  1915.  It  left  the  Russians  far  on  the 
road  to  Erzrum,  where  the  Turks  were  hastily 
attempting  a  new  concentration,  while  in  the 
north-west  the  fragments  of  the  beaten  1st 
and  10th  Corps  had  effected  a  junction  and 
were  attempting  a  fresh  offensive.  In  the 
country  round  the  Chorok  ri^•er  and  in  the 
region  of  Sultan  Selim  the  Turks  on  the  morning 
of  the  20th  developed  vigorous  attacks,  which 
were  repulsed.  At  Olty  they  also  re>mned  the 
offensive,  pusliing  forward  a  colun^n  which,  how- 
ever, was  thrown  back  w  ith  very  heavy  losses. 
We  have  now  to  turn  our  eyes  farther  east. 
When  the  Russian  main  column  crossed  the 
Tiu'kish  frontier  in  November  and  pressed  for- 
ward to  Koprukeui,  a  second  cohnnn  entered 
Tiu-key  50  miles  farther  east,  midway  between 
Khorosan  and  Bayazid,  and  on  November  8 
seized  Kara  Kilissa.  A  week  later  it  met  the 
enemy  10  miles  to  the  north  of  Dutukht,  and, 
driving  him  back,  seized  the  town.  In  this 
district  the  Tiu'ks  employed  the  Arab  regiments 
of  the  13th  Corps,  and,  taking  the  offensive, 
delivered  a  fierce  blow  on  November  22.  The 
result  was  indecisive,  and  for  the  next  montli 
desultory  fighting  took  place  in  the  Alusligird 
valley.  Arab  reinforcements  kept  coming  in 
from  Baghdad  via  Bitlis  and  Erzrum.  Under 
the   command   of   Ha-^san   ed    Din   Pasha   they 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


77 


developed  a  vigorous  offensive  in  the  middle  of 
December,  and  an  engagement  took  place  at 
Dutukht  in  which  an  attempt  was  made  to 
envelop  the  Russians.  The  latter,  however, 
were  on  their  guard,  and  withdrew  in  time  after 
infiictuig  heavy  losses  on  the  Arabs.  During 
the  month  of  January  there  was  no  news  of  any 
fiu-ther  fighting  in  this  direction,  and  it  is  very 
probable  that  the  Turkish  forces  had  to  fall 
back  towards  Erzrum. 

A  third  Russian  column  advanced  from  the 
angle  of  the  Russo-Turco-Persian  frontiers, 
where  the  Makuli  tribesmen  are  friendly  to  the 
Russian  Army,  and  on  November  3  occupied 
the  famous,  but  now  forlorn,  town  of  Bayazid 
at  the  foot  of  Mount  Ararat,  and  thence  moved 
forward  in  the  direction  of  Van.  There  is  no 
further  record  of  its  achievements,  and  pre- 
sumably it  cooperated  with  two  Russian 
columns  which  crossed  the  Turco-Persian 
frontier.  The  operations  in  this  last  and 
most  easterly  frontier  must  now  claim  oiu- 
attention. 

The  fact  that,  though  Persia  was  neutral, 
Turkey  and  Russia  carried  on  war  on  Persian 
soil  requires  explanation.  It  is  not  a  little 
curious,  but  on  examination  the  cause  of  it  can 
be  easily  seen,  and  the  inwardness  of  che 
situation   will    be   most   easily   grasped    if   we 


represent  the  Russo-T;irco-Persian   frontier  in 
the  form  of  a  T  thus  : 


Russia 


Turkey 


Persia 
(Azurbeijan) 


In  this  simple  diagram  the  Russo-Turkish 
and  Russo-Persian  frontiers  form  the  top  ot 
the  T,  and,  if  we  neglect  the  niceties  of  geo- 
graphical position,  maybe  said  to  run  from  west 
to  east.  The  Turco-Persian  frontier  is  the  leg 
of  the  T.  Were  Persia  a  covmtry  with  a  settled 
frontier,  were  it  able  to  defend  itself,  and  were 
it  secure  in  its  inviolability,  then  Russia  and 
Turkey  would  only  fight  in  the  left  section  of 
the  leg  of  the  T,  where  the  rival  strongholds 
of  Erzrum  and  Kars  on  either  side  are  set  to 
guard  the  frontier.  But  Persia  was  not  Ln\iolate, 
was  incapable  of  defending  herself,  had  a 
frontier  the  line  of  which  had  been  the  subject 
of  dispute  between  herself  and  Turkey  from 
time  immemorial,  and  had  suffered  for  years 
past  from  continued  Tiu-kish  encro^ichments. 
Numerous  JMixed  Commissions  to  decide  the 
question  of  the  Turco-Persian  frontier  had  sat  in 
the  last  50  years.  Great  Britain  and  Russia,  as 
mediating  Powers,  had  always  beeen  represented 
on  these  Commissions,  and  it  has  been  calculated 
tliat  during  this  period  tliis  miserable  dispute,  in 


WOUNDED    TURKS     IN     HOSPITAL. 


78 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE     WAIi. 


TURKISH     ARTILLERY. 


which  we  had  no  direct  concern,  cost  the 
British  taxpayer  £150,000  in  expenses.  In  the 
year  1913  it  really  seemed  as  if  the  question 
was  at  last  entering  its  final  stage.  An  agree- 
ment was  signed  at  Constantinople  between 
the  Turkish  and  Persian  Governments,  and 
still  another  Mixed  Commission  of  the  usual 
kind  was  formed  to  carry  out  the  actual 
delimitation  of  the  frontier  on  the  basis  of  this 
agreement.  The  four  nations,  Russia,  England, 
Turkey  and  Persia,  were  represented,  and  ]\Ir. 
A.  C.  Wratislaw,  formerly  Consul-General  at 
Tabriz,  was  the  principal  English  member. 
It  began  its  operations  from  the  Persian  Gulf, 


taking  the  southern  sections  first,  and  was  still 
at  its  labours  when  war  broke  out. 

The  Turks  for  the  previous  ten  years  had 
been  particularly  shameless  in  their  aggressions 
on  the  northern  sections  of  the  frontier,  and  had 
steadily  moved  forward  the  frontier  stones  and 
their  own  Customs'  Houses  until  they  had 
made  themselves  masters  of  all  the  strategic 
points  on  the  western  side  of  Lake  L'rmia. 
The  rich  Persian  province  of  Azurbeijan  had 
sunk  into  a  state  of  anarchy  and  weakness, 
and  the  authority  of  the  Persian  Govermnent 
counted  for  nothing.  From  a  military  point  of 
view,   therefore,  the  eartern  section  of   the  T 


TIFLIS. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


79 


RECRUITS    FROM    ANATOLIA. 


became  of  vital  importance  both  to  Turkey 
and  Russia.  With  the  Turks  in  occupation 
of  all  the  strategic  points,  and  well  across  the 
frontier,  it  was  clear  that  in  the  event  of  a 
Russo-Turkish  war  Turkey  could  attack  not 
only  along  the  western  section  of  the  top  of  the 
T  where  the  frontier  is  mountainous  and  diffi- 
cult, but  also  through  Persia  on  the  eastern 
section  where  the  lie  of  the  land  is  very  much 
simpler.  The  Russians,  therefore,  had  been 
forced  to  assert  their  influence  and  authority 
in  Azurbeijan.  An  opportimity  was  offered 
in  1909  at  a  period  of  civil  war  in  Persia,  when 
the  constitutional  party  in  Tabriz  was  besieged 
by  the  forces  of  Mohammed  Ali  Shah.  In 
April,  1909,  the  British  and  Russian  Govern- 
ments were  exercising  strong  pressiu^e  at 
Teheran  to  force  the  Shah  to  grant  a  Con- 
stitution, but  meantime  Tabriz,  which  had 
stood  a  siege  of  three  months,  was  reduced  to 
the  last  extremities  of  starvation.  The  Shah 
]irocrastinated  in  his  dealings  with  the  two 
Powers,  hoping  for  the  fall  of  Tabriz,  which 
would  have  immensely  strengthened  his 
position.  In  the  city  itself  an  attack  upon 
the  foreign  consulates  by  the  starving  mob 
was  feared,  and  both  the  British  and  Russian 
colonies  made  an  urgent  appeal  to  their  Govern- 
ments to  secure  them  military  protection. 
Great   Britain   and   Russia,   therefore,    decided 


that  Tabriz  must  be  relieved  by  the  dispatch 
of  Russian  troops,  and  a  military  expedition 
was  sent  from  Julfa  to  open  the  road  and 
revictual  the  town.  From  that  time  onwards 
detachments  of  Russian  troops  were  main- 
tained in  Tabriz,  and  later  it  was  found  neces- 
sary to  send  a  strong  military  guard  to  the 
Consulate  at  Khoi,  the  Turks  retorting  by  a 
similar  step  at  Suj  Bulak.  Both  Russia  and 
Turkey  were,  therefore,  in  military  occupation 
of  parts  of  this  Persian  province  when  war 
broke  out,  and  both  were  forced  to  treat  it  as 
part  of  the  theatre  of  war.  Just  as  it  was 
important  for  Russia  that  she  should  not  be 
attacked  along  the  whole  of  the  top  of  the  T, 
instead  of  on  its  western  section,  so  it  was 
equally  vital  to  Turkey  that  she  should  not 
have  her  whole  flank  turned  by  finding  Russia 
not  merely  at  the  top,  but  also  along  the  leg  of 
the  T. 

Two  Russian  columns,  therefore,  were  sent 
across  the  Persian  frontier  into  Tiu-key  by 
the  Kotur  and  Khanesur  passes,  which  are 
about  30  miles  apart,  and  are  between  the  north 
end  of  Lake  Urmia  and  Van.  These  drove 
the  Turks  back  in  November  and  engaged 
them  between  Oilman  and  Kotur.  On  Decem- 
ber 1  they  again  defeated  the  enemy  at 
Serai  and  Bashkola.  The  Turlcs  retreated 
towards    Van.    lint  were    reinforetMl  and   again 


80 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


A    BEDOUIN. 


assumed  the  offensive,  only  to  receive  another 
check. 

Farther  to  the  south  a  mass  of  Kurdish 
levies  from  both  sides  of  the  frontier  advanced 
upon  Tabriz  from  the  direction  of  Suj  Bulak, 
Apparently  the  Russians  did  not  expect  that 
the  Tiu-ks  would  show  such  a  total  disregard 
of  the  neutrality  of  Persia  as  to  make  a  wide 
movement  through  Azurbeijan,  and  they  had, 
therefore,  withdrawn  their  small  detachment 
of  troops  from  Tabriz  for  use  elsewhere,  relying 


on  Shuja-ed-Dowleh,  the  Persian  acting 
Governor  of  Azm-beijan,  to  ofTer  any  necessary 
resistance  to  Kurdish  forays.  The  Governor, 
however,  was  capable  of  no  great  effort,  and 
after  a  skirmish  at  ZSIaragha  the  Tiu-ks  occu- 
pied Tabriz  in  the  early  part  of  January  and 
proceeded  to  Sufian  and  Maraud  on  the 
Julfa  road.  Their  success  was,  however,  a 
brtef  one.  A  Russian  detachment  routed 
them  at  Sufian,  and  re-entered  Tabriz  on 
January   30. 


CHAPTER    LII. 

THE    INVASION    OF    CHALDEA. 

The  Character  of  the  Persian  Gulf,  Where  the  History  of  the  World  Began — How  the 
Turks  First  Came  to  the  Gulf — The  Rise  op  the  Wahabis  in  Arabia — Midhat  Pasha's 
Annexations  of  Gulf  Territory — The  Dawn  of  German  Influence  in  the  IMiddle  East — 
The  K-aiser's  Pilgrimages  and  the  Baghdad  Railway — The  First  Germans  in  the  Gulf — 
Attempts  to  Seize  Koweit  and  Various  Islands — The  Lure  of  the  Gulf  Pearls— The 
Diplomatic  Negotiations  in  London — A  Picture  of  German  World -Politics  in  Miniature — 
Why  Great  Britain  Claims  Pabamountcy  in  the  Gulf — Admiral  Mahan's  Grave  Warning — - 
The  Outbreak  of  War,  and  the  Seizure  of  Fao — The  Admiralty  Oil- works  on  the  Shatt- 
al-Arab — The  First  Turkish  Attack — Arrival  of  General  Barrett  with  British  Rein- 
forcements— The  Action  at  Sahain — The  Battle  of  Sahil,  which  Decided  the  Fate  of 
Basra — The  Fall  of  Basra — The  Advance  up  the  River  to  Kurna — The  First  Action  at 
Kurna  and  the  Call  for  Reinforcements — The  Fall  of  Kurna  and  Surrender  of  the 
Turkish  Garrison. 


ONE  of  the  immediate  effects  of  the 
appearance  of  Turlcey  as  a  com- 
batant was  to  extend  tlie  area  of  tlie 
war  to  the  Persian  Gulf.  HostiUties 
quickly  began  between  the  Turks  and  a  force  of 
British  and  Indian  troops  at  the  head  of  the 
Gulf.  In  a  very  short  time  the  British  had 
defeated  the  Turks,  captured  the  important 
port  of  Basra,  gained  possession  of  the  delta  of 
the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  and  driven  the  rem- 
nants of  the  Turkish  forces  a  long  way  north- 
ward towards  Baghdad.  The  operations  thus 
initiated  formed  an  entirely  separate  campaign. 
They  were  of  great  political  importance,  for 
they  shattered  at  a  blow  Germany's  dream  of 
a  dominion  extending  to  the  Middle  East. 
Basra  was  to  have  been  the  terminus  of  the 
Baghdad  Railway,  which  represented  Ger- 
many's greatest  enterprise  in  the  domain  of 
world  politics.  Its  fall  deprived  the  (Germans 
of  that  access  to  the  seas  of  Southern  Asia 
which  they  craved.  The  campaign,  even  in  its 
early  stages,  further  brought  to  a  head  and 
finally  disposed  of  various  important  issues 
which  had  produced  differences  between  Great 
Britain  and  Turkey  for  more  than  three  de- 
Vol.  III.— Part  2<J.  SI 


cades.  Its  political  consequences  are  likely  im- 
measiu"ab)y  to  surpass  its  military  significance. 

The  recorded  history  of  the  world  probably 
began  in  the  Persian  Gulf.  All  through  the 
ages  the  destinies  of  empires  have  been  swayed 
from  its  lonely  shores,  to  a  degree  far  too  Uttle 
understood  in  the  West.  The  Power  that 
possesses  maritime  control  of  the  Gulf  can,  if 
she  chooses,  exert  a  dominating  influence  upon 
the  affairs  of  the  Middle  East.  Germany  per- 
ceived the  value  of  the  Gvilf  long  ago,  and  for 
ten  years  before  the  war  had  ;-t riven  with 
limited  success  to  establish  her  influence  there. 
During  the  twentieth  century  the  political  and 
economic  problems  associated  with  the  Gulf  are 
bound  to  attract  increasing  attention.  The 
war  did  not  finally  dispose  of  them,  but  a 
bettor  conception  of  the  character  of  the  Gulf 
and  of  past  events  in  its  vicinity  is  essential  to 
a  right  understanding  of  the  larger  issues  which 
lay  behind  the  war. 

No  other  inland  sea  is  quite  like  the  Persian 
(!ulf,  none  possesses  so  ancient  and  so  strange 
a  history,  and  none  is  so  little  known  or  visited. 
Its  narrow  entrance  lies  in  a  fur  corner  of  the 
Arabian  Sea,   where  the  lees  of  the   southern 


82 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


oceans  collect  and  strange  marine  monsters 
disport  themselves.  Approaching  the  entrance 
from  the  Gulf  of  Oman,  a  ship  may  shape  its 
course  past  the  land-lT)cked  harbour  of  Muscat, 
set  like  a  sapphire  in  the  midst  of  grim  volcanic 
heights  ;  or  it  may  coast  along  the  desolate 
shores  of  British  and  Persian  Mokran,  where 
dwell  the  Icthyophagi,  the  fish-eaters,  exactly 
as  they  did  in  the  days  of  Alexander's  retreat 
from  Sind.  Mark  well  the  low,  bare  hills  that 
fringe  the  beaches  of  Mekran.  Beliind  thena  lie 
the  long  lateral  valleys  through  which  vast 
hordes  migrated  into  India.  They  are  perhaps 
the  oldest  of  routes  between  East  and  West, 
a  highway  of  trade  along  wMch  were  carried 
'the  silks  and  spices  that  delighted  the  nobles 
of  Rome,  although  they  Icnew  not  whence 
they  came.  The  entrance  to  the  Gulf  is 
guarded  on  the  Arabian  side  by  the  bastioned 
steeps  of  Ras  Musendam,  the  head  of  the 
massive  deserted  peninsula  wliich  constitutes, 
says  Mr.  Hogarth,  one  of  the  few  bits  of  compact 
exploration  still  left  to  the  adventuroiis.  The 
mighty  headland  looks  across  the  straits  to  the 
Persian  island  of  Hormuz,  whose  vivid  rocks 
glow  lilce  jewels  in  the  setting  sun,  save  where 
a  dark  and  niassi\-e  keep  that  seems  built  for 
eternity  recalls  how  tiny  Portugal  once  held 
the  East  in  fee  until  the  effort  drained  her  of 


her  manhood.  Behind  the  Masendam  Penin- 
sula winds  the  wonderful  tropical  fiord  called 
the  Elphinstone  Inlet,  cleaving  the  barren 
mountains  for  nineteen  miles,  a  sheet  of  water 
of  unknown  depth,  where  a  whole  fleet  might 
lie  concealed  were  it  not  the  hottest  place  in 
the  world.  Across  a  narrow  neck  of  land  lies 
the  huge  landlocked  expanse  of  Malcolm 
Inlet,  less  often  furrowed  by  tlie  keels  of  ships 
than  the  Antarctic  Seas. 

The  eastern  shores  of  the  Gulf  begin  with 
the  flat  and  sweltering  sands  of  Bunder  Abbas, 
which  has  sometimes  been  called  the  Gulf's 
southern  key.  It  is  not  so  in  fact,  for  it  is 
merely  an  open  roadstead.  The  real  key  is 
formed  by  the  islands  of  Ivishm,  Henjam,  and 
Larak,  and  still  more  by  the  Clarence  Straits 
which  divide  Kishm  from  the  mainland.  Great 
Britain  holds  on  lease  a  patch  of  Ivishm, 
known  as  Basidu,  and  also  holds  a  square  mile 
of  Henjam,  on  which  stands  a  telegraph  station. 
From  Basidu  to  the  head  of  the  Gulf  the  Persian 
coast  is  one  sheer  wall,  fronted  by  a  narrow 
strip  of  low -lying  land.  The  great  plateau  of 
Persia  ends  abruptly  and  precipitously  near  the 
sea,  and  only  the  shallow  open  roadstead  of 
Bushire  partially  redeems  the  Shah's  dominions 
from  the  reproach  of  being  without  a  harboiu-. 
Yet  the  low  and  scanty  foreshores  once  bred  a 
race  of  mariners,  and  long  ago  men  of  Arab 
blood  sailed  from  these  beaches  and  sacked 
Canton.  One  can  still  trace  the  ruins  of  the 
cities  of  Keis  and  Siraf,  where  swarms  of 
Chinese  junks  once  lay  at  anchor,  as  they  used 
to  lie  in  Bombay  in  the  days  before  China 
partly  lost  the  secret  of  the  sea. 


THE     LAGOON     AT    SHARGAH,     PIRATE     COAST. 
In  the  days  of  piracy  the  town  was  well  sheltered. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


83 


THE     ASSHAR    CREEK     AT     BASRA. 


The  western  side  of  the  Gulf  begins  with  the 
Pirate  Coast,  and  though  the  pirates  have  been 
turned  from  their  e\'il  ways  by  the  maritime 
truce  imposed  by  the  British  Government,  their 
strongholds  reinain  unclianged  in  appearance. 
At  Shargah,  whicli  is  a  typical  example,  there 
is  a  blue  lagoon  amid  the  sandhills,  behind 
which  lies  the  tov\n,  dominated  by  an  old 
battlemented  castle.  A  century  ago  British 
troops  subdued  these  nests  "of  wild  corsairs, 
who  were  on  one  occasion  strong  enough  to 
capture  and  destroy  one  of  the  King's  warships. 
Even  in  these  lonely  seas,  where  travellers  are 
rarely  seen,  German  influence  had  been  subtly 
at  work  in  the  ten  yeai's  before  the  war.  Off 
the  Pii'ate  Coast  lies  the  islet  of  Abu  Musa,  of 
which  a  German  firm  secured  a  lease  through 
bribed  intermediaries,  on  the  pretence  of 
working  deposits  of  red  oxide.  Next  to  the 
haunts  of  the  pirates  comes  the  peninsula  of  El 
Katar,  where  the  Turks  vainly  tried  to  establish 
themselves.  In  the  bight  behind  lie  the  Pearl 
Islands,  the  domain  of  the  Sheikh  of  Balu-ein, 
and  the  mart  for  all  the  treasures  of  the  Great 
Pearl  Bank,  which  stretches  nearly  the  whole 
length  of  the  Gulf.  In  the  middle  of  Bahrein 
are  liundreds  of  thousands  of  still  inexplicable 
mound  tombs,  and  on  the  mainland  opposite 
lie?  the  dead  city  of  Gerrha,  never  yet  visited 
by  European  archaeologists,  although  it  was  the 
earliest  home  of  the  Phoenicians.     Northward 


runs  the  long  coast-line  of  El  Hasa,  hitherto 
claimed  by  the  Turks,  and  at  length  there 
comes  into  view  the  splendid  bay  of  Koweit,  the 
finest  harbour  in  the  Gulf,  long  and  actively 
coveted  by  both  Turks  and  Germans.  Finally, 
at  the  head  of  the  Gulf  sand  and  movmtains 
are  replaced  by  the  green  and  smiling  fields  and 
palm  groves  which,  with  the  desert  and  swampy 
lands  beyond,  form  the  delta  of  the  Tigris 
and  Euphrates.  From  the  point  where  the 
two  rivers  unite  the  stream  is  known  as  the 
Shatt-al-Arab,  and  it  flows  through  an  alluvial 
land  as  flat  as  Holland.  About  67  iniles  from 
its  mouth  stands  the  ancient  city  and  seaport 
of  Basra,  the  centre  of  Turkish  influence  in  the 
Gulf. 

The  country  round  Basra  was  the  scene  of  the 
first  operations  of  the  Mesopotamian  and  Gulf 
campaign,  but  the  local  issues  which  lay  at  its 
back  affected  the  whole  Persian  Gulf.  The 
Turks  had  long  tried  to  dispute  in  various 
stealthy  ways  the  predominant  and  pacific 
influence  which  the  British  had  exercised  in 
Gulf  waters  for  three  hundred  years.  After 
they  entered  into  a  thinly  veiled  partnership 
\\ith  the  Germans  the  pressure  against  British 
interests  steadily  increased.  When  Turks  and 
Britons  fovight  before  Basra,  they  were  con- 
tending for  domination  in  the  (!uh',  and  the  hu-e 
which  lay  behind  was  that  of  the  short  road 
to  India.      That  is  why  a  study  of  conditions 


84 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


THE    RIVER    BANK     AT     FAO. 
Much  of  the  earlier  fighting  was  in  date  gnves  oi  this  character. 


and  events  in  the  Gulf  is  an  imperative  prelude 
to  a  full  comprehension  of  tliis  particular 
campaign. 

Let  us  first  see  how  it  was  that  the  Turks 
came  to  emerge  upon  the  Gulf  at  all;  The 
Turkish  course  of  empire  long  lay  westward. 
From  the  time  when  Ertoglu-ul  and  his  band  of 
four  hundred  horsemen  charged  the  Mongol 
army  near  Angora  in  the  thirteenth  century, 
and  thus  took  the  first  step  which  led  to  the 
foundation  of  the  Ottoman  Empire,  the  Otto- 
man T\irks  always  looked  towards  the  setting 
rather  than  the  rising  sun.  Their  roots 
were  planted  deep  in  Asia,  bvit  it  was  the  lure 
of  European  conquest  which  constantly  led 
theuT  onward  until  the  tide  was  stayed  at  the 
very  gates  of  Vienna.  Nevertheless,  they  did 
not  neglect  to  extend  their  dominions  in  Asia 
and  Africa.  They  conquered  Egypt  early  in 
the  sixteenth  century,  and  in  the  same  century 
Sultan  Suleiman  the  Magnificent  effected  the 
first  Turldsh  captvire  of  Baghdad.  He  was 
ousted  from  the  city  by  the  Persians,  and  it 
was  not  mitil  1638  that  Sultan  Murad  IV. 
appeared  before  Baghdad  with  an  immense 
army,  recovered  it,  and  hoisted  the  Tirrkish 
flag.  Thirty  years  later,  in  1668,  the  Turks 
marched  down  to  Basra,  captured  it,  and  came 
for  the  first  time  to  the  shores  of  the  Persian 
Gulf. 


It  is  not  at  all  generally  realised  that  the 
British  were  in  the  Gulf  before  the  Turks.  The 
first  time  British  arms  were  carried  to  victory 
in  the  Persian  Gulf  was  on  January  19,  1622, 
when  a  British  force  laid  siege  to  a  Portuguese 
fort  on  the  island  of  Kishm,  opposite  Hormuz, 
and  captured  it  a  fortnight  later.  Two  nionths 
afterwards  the  British,  fighting  in  alliance  with 
a  Persian  army,  seized  and  sacked  the  Portu- 
guese city  and  island  of  Hormuz,  and  laid  its 
almost  fabulous  glories  low.  It  wan  at  this 
time  that  the  British  made  a  treaty  with 
Persia  by  which  they  imdertook  "  to  keep  two 
men-of-war  constantly  to  defend  the  Gulf." 
The  number  of  warships  was  afterwards  in- 
creased to  five  and,  from  that  time  onward, 
British  seamen  policed  and  protected  the  Gulf, 
and  their  power  and  influence  were  ne\'er 
seriously  disputed. 

The  Turks  made  little  use  of  Mesopotamia 
and  the  deltaic  lands.  As  in  other  parts  of 
their  Empire,  their  influence  always  lay  like  a 
bligiat  upon  the  country  and  stifled  progress. 
Nor  did  they  do  anything  effective  to  extend 
their  rvile  beyond  the  valleys  of  the  Tigris  and 
Euphrates  in  the  direction  of  Arabia.  The 
Turk  has  never  been  in  any  true  sense  the  over- 
lord of  Arabia,  and  he  never  will  be.  Early  in 
t!ie  eighteenth  centm-y  the  then  Turkish  Vali  of 
Baghdad    actually    rei:)udiated    the    control    of 


THE.  TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


85' 


Staniboul.  and  made  the  city  and  all  the  lands 
southward  to  the  Gulf  a  practically  inde- 
pendent State.  His  successor  appealed  to  the 
British  in  India  to  take  him  under  their  pro- 
tection, and  asked  for  British  officers  to  train 
his  armies.  Some  officers  were  sent,  but  when 
the  British  Govemnaent  heard  of  the  arrange- 
ment months  afterwards  it  was  severely  con- 
demned. London  preferred  to  remain  on  good 
terms  with  the  Porte,  and  cared  nothing  about 
the  future  of  Mesopotamia.  The  officers  were 
recalled,  and  by  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
centvu"y  the  Sultan  had  gradually  recovered  his 
old  authority.  Had  it  not  been  for  the  action 
of  the  Home  Government,  Mesopotamia  would 
have  been  a  British  protectorate  for  the  last 
hundred  years. 

The  rise  of  the  Wahabis  in  .Arabia  had  a 
lasting  effect  upon  the  fortvmes  of  the  people 
on  the  Arabian  shores  of  the  Gulf  and  upon  the 
Turkish  position  in  these  regions.  The  Wahabi 
movement  was  essentially  an  attempt  to  revert 
to  the  early  sunplicity  of  the  Islamic  faith,  and 
in  course  of  time  it  shook  the  world  of  Islam  to 
its  foundations.  The  Wahabis  began  to  grow 
strong  in  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  They  propagated  their  doctrines  by 
the  sword,  and  when  the  nineteenth  centvury 
dawned  they  had  very  nearly  conquered  all 
Arabia.  They  reached  the  Persian  Gulf  very 
early  in  their  progress,  and  only  dread  of  the 
growing  power  of  the  British  kept  them  out  of 
Muscat,  the  capital  of  Oman.  They  entered 
Mesopotamia  in  1801,  and  sacked  the  sacred 
shrines  of  the  Shiahs  at  Kerbela.     They  took 


LANDING    AT     BAHREIN. 

The   officer    is  Captain  W.  H.  Shakespear,  C.I.E., 

who  was  killed  in  Central  Arabia. 

ilecca  and  Medina,  and  desecrated  the  tomb  of 
Mahomet,  and  at  length  they  became  so  for- 
midable that  the  Sultan  of  Tiu-key  saw  that  his 
claims  to  the  Caliphate  were  in  danger. 

He  persuaded  Mehemet  Ali,  the  Pasha  of 
Eg;ypt,  to  send  Egyptian  armies  against  the 
Wahabis.  The  Egyptian  forces  slowly  overran 
Arabia,  but  it  took  them  seven  years  to  over- 
thro\\^  the  Wahabi  movement.     They  won  their 


104ih  WELLESLEY'S     RULES     MAUCHING     AGKOSS      IHE     DESERT. 


29-  2 


8G 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


'•^■.<5S^*>- 


-?^^^«i"^  *•> 


-7X.    -*-^*-fe.--.,,  ^,^ 


^^=^Alr»  ''■-'*'*^Cw«--    '   ^'"    >^-     -'•.^*=^    ^t£^  •■'^"  ■  a:-^-  •   ^ -^    • 


AN     ARAB     COUNCIL     ON     THE     BEACH     AT     HENJAM     ISLAND. 

The  post  is  the  British  cable  mark. 


final  victory  in  1818,  but  neither  Turks  nor 
Egyptians  were  able  to  garrison  Central  Arabia 
permanently.  In  five  years  the  Wahabi  power 
was  partially  re-established,  and  for  the 
remainder  of  the  century  the  history  of  Central 
Arabia  turned  upon  the  rivalry  between  the 
great  ruling  Wahabi  houses  of  Ibn  Rashid  and 
Ibn  Saud.  Their  quarrels  have  continued  to 
the  present  day,  though  at  present  the  family 
of  Ibn  Saud  is  almost  completely  in  the 
ascendant.  Yet  little  more  than  a  decade 
before  the  war  three  British  cruisers  had  to 
land  a  force  with  guns  at  Koweit,  and  trenches 
had  to  be  dug  round  the  town,  to  save  it 
from  an  attack  by  an  army  under  the  then 
head  of  the  Ibn  Rashids. 

These  memories  may  seem  remote  and  unim- 
portant, but  they  are  of  very  present  urgency. 
The  Wahabi  movement  did  not  die,  but 
smouldered  with  modem  modifications.  The 
disputes  between  the  houses  of  Ibn  Rashid  and 
Ibn  Saud  remained  a  dominating  factor  in 
Arabian  politics.  One  of  the  many  issues 
which  must  be  settled  as  a  resxilt  of  the  war 
was  that  of  the  future  of  Arabia.  It  was  not 
a  local  issue,  as  it  seemed.  It  affected  the 
whole  of  Islam,  for  it  involved  the  future 
guardianship  of  the  Sacred  Cities  and  the 
control  of  the  pilgrimage  to  Mecca.  In  any 
settlement  that  was  reached,  the  great  chief- 
tains of  Arabia  would  have  to  be  reckoned 
with.  One  of  the  desires  of  Ibn  Saud 
was  an  outlet  to  the  Persian  Gulf,  and  he 
more    than    once    sought    British    protection. 


though  it  was  never  accorded  to  him.  He 
would  long  ago  have  taken  the  Turkish  ports 
of  Bida  and  Ojeir,  in  the  peninsula  of  El 
Katar,  but  he  feared  Turkish  reprisals  from  the 
sea.  Until  1913  the  venerable  and  mildewed 
corvette  which  the  Turks  stationed  at  Basra 
was  enough  to  keep  liim  in  his  inland  cities 
and  oases.  There  was  never  a  case  where 
sea  power  of  the  most  insignificant  kind  was 
so  cheaply  and  successfully  exercised. 

The  Turks,  then,  were  never  masters  of  any 
portion  of  the  western  shores  of  the  Gulf  until 
the  'seventies  of  last  century.  They  held  Basra. 
They  held  the  little  town  of  Fao,  at  the  entrance 
to  the  Shatt-al-Arab,  where  they  maintained 
a  mud  structure  which  by  courtesy  was  called  a 
fort.  Beyond  lay  the  sands  of  Arabia,  where 
the  irades  of  the  Sultan  had  no  validity.  The 
Sheikhs  of  Koweit  preserved  their  independence, 
though  prudence  prompted  them  to  keep  on 
friendly  terms  with  their  neighbours.  South 
of  their  town  lay  the  region  of  El  Hasa,  with  one 
or  two  fertile  oases  in  which  towns  existed. 
South  again  of  El  Hasa  came  the  peninsula  of 
El  Katar.  In  both  El  Hasa  and  El  Katar  the 
Arab  tribes  lived  munolested.  Beyond  El 
Katar  came  the  territories  of  the  cliiefs  of  the 
Pirate  Coast,  with  whom  Great  Britain  held 
treaties  under  which  they  agreed  to  keep  the 
peace  at  sea  and  to  abstain  from  piracy.  The 
Turks  maintained  intermittent  relations  with 
the  Wahabi  chiefs  of  Central  Arabia,  who  took 
the  advice  tendered  them  by  the  distant  Sultan, 
or  disregarded  it,  precisely  as  it  suited  them. 


4 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


87 


88 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


Into  this  scene  of  comparative  passivity  came 
the  late  Midhat  Pasha,  and  it  was  with  his 
advent  that  modern  Turkish  aggression  in  the 
Persian  Gulf  really  began.  Midhat  Pasha  was 
an  extremely  able  and  energetic  man,  and  in 
after  years  he  incurred  the  inexorable  hatred  of 
the  Sultan  Abdul  Hamid  because  he  was  the 
author  of  the  first  Turkish  Constitution.  He 
paid  for  his  liberal  ideas  with  his  life,  being 
imprisoned  and  eventually  assassinated  at  Taifj 
in  Arabia,  in  1883.  He  was  made  Vali  of 
Baghdad  in  1869,  and  in  the  early  'seventies  he 
set  about  extending  Tiirkish  rule  in  the  Persian 
Gulf.  He  began  by  establishing  closer  relations 
with  Koweit.  Next  he  sailed  down  the  Gulf, 
landed  a  force  on  the  coast  of  El  Hasa,  con- 
quered the  Arabian  tribes,  and  converted  the 
region  into  a  Tiirkish  sandjak.  Then  he 
appeared  with  Ms  flotilla  off  tlie  island  of 
Bahrein,  which  he  "  annexed,"  a  proceeding 
wliich  was  very  soon  upset  by  the  British 
Government.  He  laid  claim  to  the  peninsula 
of  El  Katar,  but  Great  Britain  declined  to 
recognize  his  pretensions.  The  Government 
of  the  day  did,  however,  most  foolishly  and 
unwisely  accept  his  conquest  of  El  Hasa,  a 
decision  wliich  in  later  years  there  was  every 
reason  to  deplore.  We  had  never  retained  any 
territory  in  the  Gulf  ourselves.  We  had  every 
right  to  object  to  any  other  Power  filching 
great  tracts  of  country  in  this  region.  But 
1873  was  a  period  when  Britain  was  unmindful 


of  her  larger  responsibilities  and  duties,  and 
temporarily  forgetful  of  her  own  glorious  past. 

Midhat  Pasha  was  summoned  back  to  Con- 
stantinople in  1873,  and  was  made  Grand 
Vizier.  The  activity  he  generated  in  all  the 
lands  south  of  Baghdad  quickly  died  away,  and 
the  Turks  gave  comparatively  little  trouble 
until  the  rise  of  German  influence  on  the  Golden 
Horn  stimulated  them  to  fresh  aggression-  They 
kept  a  battalion  or  two  and  some  guns  at  El 
Hofuf,  the  town  in  the  oasis  of  that  name, 
■which  is  regarded  as  the  capital  of  El  Hasa. 
They  had  a  small  garrison  at  their  port  of  El 
Katif,  and  another  at  Ojeir,  at  the  head  of  the 
Bight  of  Bahrein.  These  troops  maintained 
Turkish  sovereignty  as  far  as  the  range  of  their 
weapons,  and  no  farther.  They  collected 
taxes  spasmodically  and  without  much  oppres- 
sion, owing  to  the  fewness  of  their  numbers. 
In  El  Katar  the  sole  evidence  of  Turkish  claims 
consisted  of  a  very  small  force  in  the  town  and 
port  of  Bida.  It  never  went  beyond  the  walls 
of  the  town.  Had  it  done  so,  it  would  have  been 
destroyed  by  the  tribesmen,  who  fiercely  re- 
sented the  Turkish  intrusion.  To  the  Gulf 
peoples  the  Turks  were  a  nuisance,  but  on  the 
whole  not  a  very  troublesome  nmsance. 

The  whole  situation  was  gradually  changed 
when,  after  the  accession  of  the  Emperor 
William  II.,  Germany  formulated  her  new 
world  policies,  and  induced  Turkey  to  enter  into 
a   veiled    and   subordinate    alliance    with    her. 


By  Permission  oj"  Times  of  Indiu  lllusti.,LJ  Weekly."] 

THE     BAZAAR     AT     KOWEIT. 


iCtcil  Burns,  R.B.A. 


THE    TIMES    mSTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


89 


THE     FORESHORE     AT    BAHREIN     ISLAND. 
From  roof  of  British  Consulate. 


The  Emperor's  first  visit  to  Constantinople  in 
1889  saw  the  dawn  of  the  mighty  Pan-Germanic 
scheme  which  was  compendiously  known  in 
Berlin  as  the  B.B.B.  (Berlin-Byzantiimi- 
Baghdad).  After  the  war  began  a  professor 
lecturing  at  BerUn  said  that  Germany's  aims 
might  be  siminied  up  in  four  geographical 
catch- words :  "  North  Sea,  Constantinople, 
Baghdad.  Indian  Ocean."  Another  favourite 
definition,  attributed  to  the  Emperor  himself, 
was  "  a  Germanic  wedge  reacliing  from  Ham- 
burg to  the  Persian  Gulf."  The  Deutsche  Bank 
group  had  already  acquired  control  of  the  rail- 
ways of  European  Turkey,  and  the  locomotive 
was  to  be  the  principal  means  of  extending 
Germanic  influence  in  the  Middle  East. 

The  scheme  was  grandiose.  It  was  also  in 
some  respects  exceedingly  vague.  Perhaps  it 
owed  its  origin  in  part  to  chance  seed  dropped 
by  von  Moltke,  who  in  his  early  days,  when 
attached  to  the  Turldsh  Army,  had  ridden 
through  Anatolia,  traversed  the  Gates  of  Cilicia, 
looked  forth  upon  the  Upper  Euphrates  Valley, 
and  dreamed  dreams  of  a  day  when  these  fertile 
but  fallow  lands  might  be  won  back  to  a  pro- 
gressive civilization.  Marshal  von  der  Goltz 
Pasha,  who  in  1883  had  already  begun  Iiis  re- 
organization of  the  Turkish  military  forces, 
may  have  contributed  to  the  growth  of  the 
conception.  The  idea  that  the  Turkish  soldiery 
might  be  utilised  as  a  weapon  in  the  hands  of 
Germany  was  certainly  destined  to  bear 
remarkable  fruit.     On  the  financial  side  there 


were  big  profits  to  be  made,  for  Germany  sup- 
plied nothing  to  Turkey  without  exacting  big 
and  even  excessive  prices.  The  talk  of  founding 
German  agricultural  colonies  in  Asia  Minor 
from  the  overspill  of  Germany's  population  was 
not  very  practical,  and  was  always  doomed  to 
come  to  naught.  A  highly  civilised  European 
race,  seeking  to  win  subsistence  from  the  soil 
of  Asia,  would  be  "  iinderlived "  by  the  in- 
digenous popvilation.  Far  more  attractive 
were  the  dreams  of  controlling  as  administrators 
the  fertile  plains  of  the  Lower  Euplu^ates  and 
Tigris,  and  making  them  once  more-the  granary 
of  the  world.  In  the  beginnings  of  recorded 
history  man  fovmd  wheat  growing  wild  in  this 
rich  countrj^  evolved  the  arts  of  cultivation, 
and  made  the  wilderness  a  smiling  garden. 
Herr  Paul  Rohrbach,  whose  eyes  were  always 
fixed  upon  Mesopotamia,  was  fond  of  telling 
the  people  of  BerUn  that  so  recently  as  the 
eighth  century  the  land  between  the  two  rivers 
produced  annually  ten  million  tons  of  wheat, 
and  supported  a  popiilation  of  six  millions. 
Now,  he  would  add,  it  maintains  only  a  million 
people. 

The  objects  of  the  Germans  were,  therefore, 
to  a  certain  extent  economic,  but  they  were 
above  all  political.  They  wanted  to  build  a 
great  trunk  railway  from  the  Bosphorvxs  to  th.' 
Persian  Gulf,  with  a  port  in  Gulf  waters  as  its 
terminus.  Whatever  flag  the  port  might  fly,  it 
was  meant  to  be  an  essentially  German  strong- 
hold.    It  would  have  at  its  back  an  army  under 


90 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


MALCOLM    INLET,    OMAN. 
A  huge  unfrequented  harbour.    The  distant  shores  are  some  miles  away. 


German  influence,  and  in  future  years  it  would 
serve  as  a  stepping-off  place  for  India.  The 
outward  movement  across  the  Indian  Ocean 
was  very  rarely  talked  about.  It  was  a  develop- 
ment which  lay  beyond,  and  was  perhaps  never 
more  than  dimly  conceived.  The  vital  thing 
was  to  reach  the  Persian  Gulf. 

Yet  the  Baghdad  Railway  at  first  took  shape 
very  slowly.  The  year  before  the  Emperor's 
first  visit  to  the  Sultan  Abdul  Hamid,  a  German 
company,  backed  by  the  Deutsche  Bank,  had 
obtained  a  concession  for  making  a  short  rail- 
way along  the  Asiatic  shores  of  the  Sea  of 
Marmora.  As  a  result  of  the  Emperor's  activi- 
ties, this  concession  was  developed  into  the 
scheme  for  the  construction  of  a  line  to  Angora 
and  Konia,  which  was  known  as  the  Anatolian 
Railway.  The  Emperor  paid  his  second  visit 
to  Constantinople  in  1898,  and  afterwards 
proceeded  on  his  famous  pilgrimage  through 
Syria  and  the  Holy  Land,  in  the  course  of  which 
lie  won  Turkish  support  for  ever  by  proclaiming 
himself  to  be  the  protector  of  Islam.  In  1899 
came  the  sequel.  The  Sultan  granted  a  con- 
cession for  the  continuation  of  the  Anatolian 
Railway  to  Baghdad  and  the  Persian  Gulf,  to  a 
German  corporation  which  styled  itself  "  The 
Imperial  Ottoman  Baghdad  Railway  Company." 
The  concession  was  signed  on  behalf  of  Germany 
by  Herr  von  Siemens,  of  the  Deutsche  Bank. 
By    a    further    and    more    definite    concession 


gi-anted  on  March  5,  1903,  to  Herr  von 
Gwinner,  of  the  Deutsche  Bank,  Turkey 
guaranteed  interest  on  the  cost  of  construction 
of  the  line  at  the  rate  of  £700  per  j^ear  per 
kilometre.  The  principle  of  kilometric  guaran- 
tees, which  Germany  invariably  exacted  from 
Tiu"key,  was  iniqmtous,  and  has  always  been 
strongly  denounced.  It  should  in  justice  be 
said,  however,  that  the  promoters  of  the  railway 
were  able  to  forego  the  guarantee  on  some  of 
the  earlier  sections  of  the  line  within  a  few 
years  of  their  being  open  to  traffic.  Whether 
the  later  sections  would  ever  have  made  enough 
profit  to  free  themselves  from  the  guarantee  is 
very  much  open  to  doubt. 

It  should  also  be  acknowledged  that  in 
Anatolia  tlie  line  had  beneficent  resiilts.  No 
reasonable  man  ever  doubted  that,  whether 
it  paid  or  not,  the  Baghdad  Railway  was  on  its 
economic  side  a  most  praiseworthy  enterprise. 
Asia  needs  railways,  and  no  part  of  the  Asiatic 
continent  is  more  in  need  of  good  railways 
than  Asiatic  Turkey.  The  British  opposition 
to  the  Baghdad  Railway  scheme  was  based 
partly  on  its  improper  methods  of  finance,  but 
far  more  on  the  imdoubted  fact  that  Germany's 
motive  in  promoting  it  was  primarily  political, 
and  that  it  was  meant  to  tmdermine  British 
influence  in  the  Middle  East,  and  British  para- 
moimtcy  in  the  Persian  Gulf. 

The  effects  of  the  new  German  policy  quietly 


THE    TIMEIS    HllSTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


91 


began  to  make  themselves  manifest  in  Gulf 
waters.  The  method  adopted  was  to  protest 
on  every  occasion  that  German  aims  in  the 
Gulf  were  exclusively  commercial,  but  British 
vigilance  soon  discovered  another  side  to  the 
occupations  of  German  agents.  They  talked 
of  coromerce,  but  they  surreptitiously  sought 
at  various  points  to  obtain  a  territorial 
footing. 

It  is  most  interesting  and  instructive  to  trace 
the  germination  and  the  growth  of  German 
influence  around  the  shores  of  this  inland  sea. 
The  details  may  seem  trifling,  but  they  reveal 
German  methods  in  a  compact  and  illuminating 
manner. 

The  very  first  Germans  who  seem  to  have 
traded  in  the  Gulf  opened  business  under  the 
name  of  Messrs.  Wonckhaus  &  Co.,  and  were 
understood  to  represent  a  Hamburg  firm. 
Their  proceedings  were  characteristic.  They 
went  in  1896  to  Lingah,  a  little  town  on  the 
Persian  coast  where  no  other  European  resided. 
Even  the  British  Vice-Consul  was,  according  to 
Lord  Curzon's  book  on  Persia,  a  "  jolly  old 
Arab."  The  Wonckhaus  firm  modestly  began 
by  dealing  in  shells  and  mother-of-pearl,  said 
very  little  about  itself,  avoided  all  Eiu-opeans, 
but  cultivated  a  large  acquaintance  among  the 
roving  Gulf  population. 

The  next  year  the  German  Govermnent 
quietly  established  a  Vice-Consulate  at  Bushire. 
At  that  time  there  were  exactly  six  German 
subjects  in  the  whole  of  the  Gulf. 


In  1899,  after  the  Baghdad  Railway  con- 
cession was  first  signed,  things  grew  busier. 
The  old  German  cruiser  Arcona,  not  the 
warship  of  that  name,  came  to  the  Gulf  on  her 
way  home  from  China.  It  was  understood 
that  she  was  looking  for  a  suitable  terminus 
for  the  railway.  She  spent  some  time  in 
various  secluded  bays,  but  was  imable  to  get 
up  the  Shatt-al-Arab  to  Basra,  as  she  could  not 
cross  the  bar  at  the  mouth  of  the  river.  A 
little  later  in  the  same  year  a  party  of  Germans 
appeared  at  Bunder  Abbas.  They  said  they 
were  "  scientists,"  but  they  were  certainly  not 
astronomers.  They  disappeared  as  mysteriously 
as  they  came. 

In  1900  Herr  Stemrich,  who  was  then  German 
Consul-General  at  Constantinople,  came  over- 
land through  Asiatic  Turkey  at  the  head  of  a 
mission  which  was  making  the  first  rough  in- 
spection of  the  route  of  the  proposed  railway. 
The  members  of  the  mission  included  the 
German  Military  Attache  at  Constantinople. 
Herr  Stemrich  went  to  Koweit,  where  he  was 
courteously  received  by  Sheikli  Mubarak.  He 
explained  that  the  Baghdad  Railway  Company 
desired  to  establish  its  terminus  on  the  shores 
of  the  Bay  of  Koweit.  He  wanted  to  buy  a  site 
at  Ras  Kathama,  at  the  head  of  the  bay,  and 
to  lease  twenty  square  miles  of  territory  around 
it.  Sheikh  INIubarak  refused,  for  he  mistrusted 
his  plausible  visitors.  He  knew,  as  all  Maho- 
medans  knew,  that  Germany  had  contracted 
some    sort    of    mysterious    alliance    with    the 


MATRA.    THE     CENTRE     OF    THE     MUSCAT    DATE     TRADE. 


92 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAIi. 


THE     SHEIKH'S    CASTLE    AT     SHARGAH,     ON     THE     PIRATE     COAST. 
The  ancient  cannon  is  the  Sheikh's  sole  piece  of  artillery. 


Turks.  He  wished  to  have  nothing  to  do  with 
any  friends  of  Turkey,  because  the  Tui"ks  were 
constantly  trying  to  undermine  his  position. 
Herr  Steinrich  was  politely  bowed  out  of  the 
high  council  chamber,  where  the  Sheikli  was 
constantly  wont  to  sit,  with  his  gaze  wandering 
over  the  wide  expanse  of  his  precious  bay. 

There  was  another  and  far  more  definite 
reason  for  Sheikh  Mubarak's  refusal.  On 
January  23,  1899,  he  had  signed  a  secret  agree- 
ment with  Great  Britain,  in  which,  in  return 
for  certain  undertakings,  he  agreed,  among 
other  things,  not  to  lease  or  dispose  of  any 
portion  of  lais  territory  to  the  Government  or 
subjects  of  any  foreign  Power  without  the 
previous  consent  of  Great  Britain.  The  agree- 
ment was  part  of  the  British  response  to  the 
Kaiser's  visit  to  the  Sultan  in  the  previous 
year,  the  results  of  which  were  not  unknown  in 
London  and  Simla.  It  was  made  within  a 
month  of  Lord  Curzon's  arrival  in  India  as 
Viceroy,  and  was  ahuost  the  first  matter  he  took 
in  hand  after  assuming  office. 

The  Germans  were  undefeated.  If  they  could 
not  get  their  terminus  by  purchase,  they  pro- 
posed to  obtain  it  by  force  tlu-ough  the  agency 
of  their  puppets  the  Turks.  Towards  the  end 
of  the  year  1900  Sheikh  Mubarak  decided  to 
take  a  hand  in  the  warfare  in  Central  Arabia 
between  the  houses  of  Ibn  Rashid  and  Ibn 
Saud.     He  led  a  small  army  into  the  interior 


in  support  of  Ibn  Saud,  was  ambushed  in  a 
deep  defile  whUe  returning  from  the  city  of 
Hail,  and  suffered  a  severe  reverse. 

His  temporary  weakness  made  a  German 
opportunity.  Early  in  1901  a  Turkish  corvette 
packed  with  troops  sailed  into  Koweit  Harboiu", 
and  its  commander  announced  that  he  proposed 
to  take  possession  of  the  town.  Great  Britairi 
had  been  warned  of  the  plot,  and  had  madt; 
preparations.  A  British  cruiser  was  Ijdng  in 
the  harbour,  and  the  Turks  were  told  that  their 
corvette  would  be  sunk  if  a  single  soldier  was 
landed.  They  sailed  away.  Later  in  the  year 
the  corvette  returned,  bearing  a  high  Turkish 
dignitary  who  was  carrying  a  menacing  letter 
addressed  by  the  Sultan  to  Mubarak.  Again  a 
British  cruiser  intervened,  and  as  a  result  of  its 
support  Mubarak  ordered  the  envoy  to  depart. 
Then  the  Turks  mcited  Ibn  Rashid  to  attack 
Koweit,  and  only  the  assistance  of  thre« 
British  cruisers,  as  already  related,  saved  the 
town  from  being  sacked.  The  next  move  \\  as 
to  make  use  of  Mubarak's  nephews,  who  were  in 
exile  in  Turkish  territory.  They  sailed  from 
the  Shatt-al-Arab  with  a  fleet  of  native  craft  to 
take  Koweit,  but  the  whole  flotUla  was  dis- 
persed by  a  single  British  gunboat.  Thereafter, 
the  German  plots  for  seizing  Koweit  by  force 
were  abandoned. 

A  new  method  of  obtaining  access  to  Koweit 
territory  was  then  instigated  by  the  Germans. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


93 


They  had,  meanwhile,  discovered  a  possible 
alternative  terminus.  The  north  side  of  the 
Bay  of  Koweit  is  bounded  by  the  large  and 
m,arshy  island  of  Bubian.  Behind  Bubian  are 
the  long  and  deep  inlets  known  as  the  Khor 
Abdullah  and  the  Kiior  Zobeir,  which  penetrate 
a  good  deal  of  the  way  to  Basra.  The  Germans 
seem  to  have  thought  that  if  they  made  their 
terminus  somewhere  on  the  Khor  Abdullah 
they  would  have  it  in  a  place  fairly  safe  against 
attack.  Unfortunately  for  them,  there  were 
difficulties.  Mubarak  claimed  jurisdiction  to  a 
point  tw^enty  miles  north-west  of  the  Klior 
Abdullah.  He  was  also  the  indisputable 
owner  of  Bubian,  which  completely  commanded 
the  passage  to  the  sea.  His  rights  were  vio- 
lated, and  Turkish  posts  were  estabhshed  at 
various  points  within  his  territory,  including 
the  island  of  Bubian. 

The  British  Embassy  at  Constantinople  was 
at  that  period  exceedingly  inactive,  and  the 
Home  Government  had  passed  from  the  "  hot  " 
fit  to  the  "  cold "  fit.  An  incident  which 
happened  at  a  meeting  between  King  Edward 
and  the  German  Emperor  is  understood  to  have 
contributed  to  this  change.  The  Emperor  was 
eager  to  talk  about  Koweit,  in  wliich  he  took  a 
deep  and  direct  interest.  King  Edward  was 
armed  with  certain  notes  on  a  sheet  of  paper. 
The  Emperor  asked  if  he  niight  have  the  notes, 
and  then  promptly,  but  most  improperly, 
recorded  them  as  an  official  communication. 
The  notes  contained  a  questionable  admission. 
It  was  thought  best  to  condone  the  Emperor's 
sharp  practice,  but  British  policy  at  Koweit 
suffered  in  consequence.     The  posts  on  Bubian 


were  allowed  to  remain  after  a  formal  protest, 
much  to  the  chagrin  of  Mubarak,  who  had 
faithfully  stuck  to  us,  but  had  been  imper- 
fectly supported.  They  were  there  almost 
\intil  the  war  began,  although,  meanwhile, 
Germany  had  announced  her  intention  of 
rnaldng  her  terminus  at  Basra.  She  never  really 
abandoned  her  desire  to  reach  Koweit.  One 
of  the  provisions  of  the  Anglo-Turkish  Agree- 
ment about  the  Baghdad  Railway,  which  was 
never  signed  owing  to  the  outbreak  of  the  war, 
provided  for  the  residence  of  a  Turkish  official 
at  Koweit.  He  would  have  been  as  constant 
a  centre  of  intrigue  as  was  the  Ottoman  High 
Commissioner  in  Cairo. 

Elsewhere  in  the  Gulf  the  Germans  grew 
more  active.  The  firm  of  Wonckhaus,  which 
had  begun  so  humbly  by  buying  shells  on  the 
beach  at  Lingah,  rapidly  blossomed  into  a  large 
and  widespread  enterprise.  In  1901  the  head- 
quarters were  removed  to  the  island  of  Bahrein. 
A  new  "  branch  "  was  opened  at  Basra,  and  a 
big  house  was  taken  for  it.  The  whole  Gulf 
wondered  where  the  money  came  from.  It 
certainly  was  never  obtained  from  profits. 
Another  branch  was  opened  at  Bunder  Abbas. 
The  Bahrein  branch  very  nearly  became  the 
scene  of  an  "  international  incident."  Sheikh 
Isa,  of  Bahrein,  was  having  much  trouble  with 
a  turbulent  nephew,  who  had  a  following  of 
truculent  retainers.  One  of  these  followers 
violently  assaulted  one  of  the  Wonckhaus 
coolies,  and  directly  afterwards  one  Bahnsen, 
an  assistant  to  Wonckhaus,  was  badly  ham- 
mered. The  incident  sounds  paltry,  but  it  was 
just   one   of   the   pretexts   for   interference   for 


A     DESERTED     BRITISH     NAVAL    STATION     AT     BASIDU,     ON     KISHM    ISLAND. 
The  RI.M.S.   "Lawrence"  is  lying  beyond,  in  the  Clarence  Straits. 

29—3 


94 


THE    TIMES    HISTOIiY    OF    THE    WAI!. 


which  Germany  was  eagerly  watching.  She 
was  given  no  chance.  Within  three  days  a 
British  gunboat  arrived,  bearing  the  British 
Resident  in  the  Persian  Gulf.  A  sum  of  £60 
was  instantly  paid  as  compensation  to  the 
bruised  Bahnsen,  and  the  ringleaders  in  the 
disturbance  were  publicly  flogged  and  then 
banished.  In  1905  Germany  showed  signs  of 
desiring  to  open  direct  relations  with  the 
Sheikh  of  Bahrein,  but  it  was  at  once  pointed 
out  that  the  Sheikh's  external  relations  were, 
with  his  consent,  imder  British  control. 

The  Persian  Gulf  was  almost  certainly  the 
earliest  home  of  the  primitive  civilization  of  the 
world.  Sonae  among  the  very  few  peoj^le  who 
have  really  tried  to  study  Bahrein  believe  that 
it  was  probably  the  real  cradle  of  the  higher 
development  of  the  hiunan  race.  Its  extra- 
ordinary collection  of  mound  tombs,  stretching 
as  far  as  the  eye  can  see  across  its  desert 
interior,  puzzle  the  chance  travellers  who  have 
examined  them.  All  through  the  ages  its 
rough  tracks  have  drawn  adventurers  from 
many  lands — British  and  Arabs  and  Persians, 
Portuguese  and  Greeks  and  Phoenicians,  Baby- 
lonians and  Chaldeans  and  Sumeriahs,  and 
those  "  black-heads "  who  were  perhaps  the 
first  progenitors  of  civilized  humanity.  Their 
footsteps  ring  down  the  ages,  and  yet  they 
have  left  very  few  records.  From  the  time 
when   Alexander's   famous    admiral   Nearchus, 


who  commanded  the  Greek  fleet  in  its  navi- 
gation of  the  Persian  Gulf,  visited  Bahrein,  the 
island  figures  hardly  at  all  in  history. 

What  brought  the  later  comers  to  Bahrein  ? 
The  answer  is — pearls.  Even  to-day  Balirein 
has  a  world-wide  interest  as  the  centre  of  the 
Gulf  pearl  trade.  In  good  years  it  sends  to 
Paris  and  New  York  and  London,  by  way  of 
Bombay  and  Siu-at,  a  million  pounds'  worth  of 
pearls.  The  Great  Pearl  Bank  practically 
extends  for  more  than  half  the  length  of  the 
western  side  of  the  Gulf,  commencing  near  Abu 
Musa,  opposite  Shargah,  curving  round  to  the 
island  of  Halul,  then  pasing  near  El  Katar,  and 
finally  terminating  at  a  point  near  Musa- 
lamiya,  where  the  territories  of  the  Sheikh  of 
Koweit  begin.  Very  little  of  the  Bank  lies  in 
territorial  waters,  and  therefore  the  right  to 
fish  upon  it  raises  a  rather  nice  question  of 
international  law.  The  pearl  fisheries  had 
been  worked  for  many  centuries  by  the  various 
Arab  communities  on  the  western  shores  of  the 
Gulf,  who  may  be  said  to  have  acquired  a  pre- 
scriptive right  in  them.  A  British  gunboat 
poUced  tlie  Bank  during  the  fishery  season, 
and  preserNJ-ed  order  among  the  pearling 
dhows.  Various  enterprising  persons  of  British, 
Indian,  and  other  nationalities,  who  sought  to 
particiiiate,  were  all  warned  off  by  the  British 
Government.  One  writer  observes  :  "  The 
question    really    settles    itself.     I    should    be 


0  ^  , 


-^^jT.^.-^-^,^^^^ 


^^. 


MESSRS.  WONCKHAUS   AND   GO.'S   HEAP   OF    PEARL   OYSTER   SHELLS   AT   BAHREIN. 


THE     TIMES    HISTOEY    OF    THE    WAR. 


H.M.    SHIPS     "ESPIEGLE"     AND     "ODIN"     LYING     OFF     BASRA. 


sorry  to  go  pearling  amid  a  horde  of  retired 
pirates  unless  I  had  an  escort  of  a  squadron  of 
cruisers." 

Germany  thought  differently.  When  the 
Wonckhaus  firm  transferred  itself  to  Bahrein, 
its  heaps  of  mother-of-pearl  shells,  bought  from 
the  fishermen  and  piled  high  outside  the 
dilapidated  building  which  served  as  an  oftice, 
seemed  innocent  enough.  But  German  minds 
a  long  way  ofi  had  been  thinking  very  ardently 
about  the  Pearl  Bank.  Searching  amid  the 
records  of  Constantinople,  Germans  had  come 
upon  the  story  of  Midhat  Pasha's  great  cruise 
in  the  Gulf  in  the  early  'seventies,  when  he  pro- 
fessed to  annex  Balirein  to  the  Sultan's 
dominions.  The  hint  was  enough.  A  shadowy 
structure  of  Turkish  claims  was  speedily  reared. 
The  enterprising  Wonckhaus  had  not  been 
settled  for  a  year  in  Balirein  before  the  Sultan 
was  formally  asked  to  grant  to  a  German 
syndicate  a  monopoly  of  the  pearl  fisheries  of 
the  Persian  Gulf.  The  Germans  explained  that 
they  proposed  to  work  the  Pearl  Bank  by 
"  scientific  "  methods,  and  the  Sultan  was  to 
have  his  share  of  the  proceeds.  The  Sultan 
had  not  the  slightest  territorial  or  financial 
interest  in  the  pearl  fisheries.  He  had  no  more 
right  to  grant  a  monopoly  of  pearl  fishing  in  the 
Gulf  than  he  had  to  confer  whaling  privileges 
in  South  Georgia.  Yet  he  was  solemnly  pro- 
ceeding to  accede  to  the  German  request  when 
one  sharp  word  from  Great  Britain  quashed  the 
whole  scheme. 

But  the  Teuton  is  not  easily  rebuffed.     The 


next  that  was  heard  of  the  German  agents  at 
Constantinople  was  that  they  were  trying  to 
persuade  the  Siiltan  to  give  them  a  lease  of 
the  island  of  Halul,  in  the  centre  of  the  Gulf, 
sixty  miles  east  of  Bida,  the  port  of  the  El 
Katar  peninsula.  Halul  is  an  island  two  or 
three  miles  in  circuniference,  with  plenty  of 
flat  grovmd.  It  has  a  useful  boat -landing  place, 
and  a  good  anchorage  well  sheltered  from  the 
"  shamal  "  winds,  the  terror  of  Gulf  mariners. 
It  has  no  water,  but,  as  at  Bunder  Abbas  and 
elsewhere  in  the  Gulf,  condensers  could  be 
used.  Halul  is  right  on  the  Pearl  Banlc,  a.nd 
within  the  20-fathom  line.  It  is  really  a  ren- 
dezvous for  the  pearling  fleet,  and  by  long 
prescription  is  regarded  as  the  joint  property 
of  all  the  Sheikhs  sending  dhows  to  the  fisheries. 
It  was  no  more  Turkish  than  the  island  of 
Bombay,  but  the  Power  that  held  it  would 
certainly  control  the  pearl  fisheries.  It  was, 
moreover,  qmte  good  enough  for  a  coaling 
station,  and  might  have  been  made  into  an 
Oriental  Heligoland. 

Again  a  British  word  in  season  stopped  this 
little  enterprise,  but  still  the  Germans  per- 
sisted. Their  next  attempt  was  more  definite, 
and  for  a  time  almost  succeeded.  They  sought 
to  establish  rights  on  the  island  of  Abu  .Musa, 
fifty  miles  north-west  of  the  town  of  Shargali. 
on  the  Pirate  Coast.  Abu  Musa  is  rather  bigger 
than  Halul,  and  there  is  ample  evidence  that  it 
has  been  continuously  in  the  possession  of  the 
Sheikhs  of  Shargah.  It  is  at  Abu  Musa  that 
the  Great  Pearl  Bank  begins.     It  was  over  Abu 


96 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


[Lovat  Fras;r: 

THE     HOTTEST     PLACE     IN     THE    WORLD  :     ELPHINSTONE     INLET,     OMAN. 
A  wonderful  tropical  fiord  nineteen  miles  long,  but  human  beings  can  only  live  there  for  four  months  in 

the  year.     The  R.I.M.S  "Lawrence  "  in  distance. 


Musa  that  Germany  fii-st  showed  signs  of 
openly  questioning  the  predoniinance  of  British 
influence  in  the  Persian  Gulf.  In  ten  years 
she  had  travelled  very  feu*  from  the  "  inno- 
cent "  German  traders  buying  shells  on  Lingah 
Beach. 

There  are  red  oxide  deposits  on  Abu  Musa, 
and  the  Sheikh  of  Shargah  granted  a  concession 
for  working  them  to  three  Arabs,  who  formed  a 
partnership.  Two  of  the  men,  father  and  son, 
resided  at  Lingah,  and  it  is  supposed  that  they 
apphed  for  the  concession  on  German  instiga- 
tion. The  third  partner  was  a  Shargah  man. 
In  190G  the  inevitable  firm  of  Wonckhaus 
appeared  on  the  scene  and  openly  acquired  the 
concession.  The  Wonckliaus  firm  was  believed 
to  be  acting  for  the  Hamburg-Amerika  Com- 
pany, which  had  all  the  time  been  at  the  back 
of  these  pertinacious  German  activities  in  the 
troubled  waters  of  the  Gulf. 

The  Sheikh  of  Shargah  protested  against  the 
transfer,  and  requested  the  British  Govermnent, 
as  his  protector,  to  intervene.  He  was  one  of 
the  Trucial  Chiefs,  and  by  a  treaty  concluded  in 
1892  all  the  chiefs  had  bound  themselves  '"  not 


to  enter  into  any  agreement  or  correspondence 
with  any  other  Power,  nor  admit  the  agent  of 
any  other  Government,  nor  to  part  with  any 
portion  of  their  territories  save  to  Great 
Britain."  Xo  notice  was  taken  by  ]\Iessrs. 
Wonckliaus  &  Co.  of  the  Sheikh's  stoppage  of 
the  concession.  In  October,  1907,  therefore, 
H.^l.S.  Lapwing  towed  to  Abu  ]Musa  a  number 
of  sailing  boats  containing  300  of  the  Sheikh's 
armed  followers.  The  men  working  the  oxide 
deposits  were  removed  and  conveyed  to  Lingah- 
According  to  the  German  account,  a  repre- 
sentative of  Wonckhaus  arrived  at  the  island  a 
few  hours  later  in  a  boat  flying  the  German  flag, 
which  was  fired  on  by  the  men  from  Shargah. 

Here,  at  last,  was  the  "international  inci- 
dent "  for  which  Germany  had  been  working. 
The  German  Government  called  for  explana- 
tions. The  German  Foreign  Office  quickly 
mobilised  its  Press,  and  a  small  rock  in  the 
I'ersian  Gulf,  of  which  hardly  anyone  in  or  out 
of  Germany  had  ever  heard,  was -made  the 
subject  of  many  cohmins  of  portentous  articles. 
The  Cologne  Gazette  was  mild,  and  said  that  the 
German  purpose  was  coimnercied.    The  Neueste 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


97 


Nachrichten,  rather  more  severe,  spoke  of  "  the 
incomprehensible  violation  of  German  rights." 
The  Berliner  Tagcblatt  grew  a  little  violent,  and 
announced  that  Great  Britain  was  trying  to 
undermine  German  prestige  and  to  demonstrate 
her  own  supremacy.  It  said  that  the  English 
"  seem  to  have  had  the  intention  of  showing 
Germany  that  she  can  do  nothing  in  the  Middle 
East  without  Great  Britain's  consent."  It 
cryptically  declared  that  "  commerce  and 
politics  can  no  longer  be  divided,"  and  that 
Germany  could  only  attain  comniercial  success 
by  "  energetic  political  action." 

The  hubbub  was  reflected  in  the  London 
Press,  but  it  soon  ceased.  The  German  ca,se  had 
not  a  leg  to  stand  on.  The  island  had  clearly 
been  in  the  possession  and  the  continuous 
occupation  of  the  Sheikhs  of  Shargah  for  many 
generations.  The  Sheikh  had  an  equal  right  to 
make  the  concession  and  to  object  to  its 
transfer  without  his  consent.      In  one  respect 


the  incident  still  served  the  German  purpose. 
It  had  enabled  Germany  publicly  to  question 
for  the  first  time  the  British  claims  to  para- 
mountcy  in  the  Gulf.  She  made  a  formal 
protest,  but  did  not  then  pursue  the  matter. 

About  the  time  that  Germany  became 
interested  in  the  Pearl  Bank  her  hand  also 
became  visible  on  the  Karun  River,  in  Persian 
territory,  at  the  head  of  the  Giilf,  in  the  region 
where  the  British  Admiralty  afterwards  acquired 
extensive  oil  interests.  The  Karun  River  is  in 
the  territory  of  the  Sheikh  of  Mohammerah,  a 
semi-independent  chieftain  who  has  special 
relations  with  Great  Britain,  though  he  nomi- 
nally acknowledges  the  overlordship  of  Persia. 
The  German  Legation  in  Teheran  was  biisily 
engaged  in  endeavouring  to  extend  German 
influence  in  Persia,  more  particularly  in  the 
south.  A  Dutchman  named  Van  Roggen,  who 
was  understood  to  be  a  German  agent,  iirrived 
on  the  Karim  River,  and  worked  out  a  scheme 


TRIBESMEN     IN     ELPHINSTONE     INLET,     OMAN. 
They  are  Shihiyins,  the  most  primitive  people  in  Arabia. 


iLovai  l-rjicr. 


Da 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OE    THE    WAR. 


for  irrigating  the  river  valley  at  a  cost  ot"  two 
millions  sterling. 

The  episode  was  again  typieal  of  German 
arbitrary  methods.  Germany  applied  to  tlie 
Persian  Government  for  a  concession  for  the 
irrigation  scheme.  It  was  not  in  the  gift  of 
Persia  at  all.  The  Sheikh  ot  Mohammerah  said 
that  if  he  wanted  his  territory  irrigated  he  would 
do  it  himself,  with  the  aid  of  British  financiers. 
At  his  request  one  of  the  Punjab  irrigation 
engineers  spent  eighteen  months  on  the  Karun 
working  out  a  separate  scheme.  Germany  still 
pressed  Persia  for  the  concession.  The  Sheikh 
made  it  quite  clear  to  the  Teheran  authorities 
that  if  they  tried  to  alienate  his  rights  in  favoiu" 
of  Germany  he  would  offer  active  resistance, 
which  he  was  well  able  to  do.  The  German 
position  was  seen  to  be  quite  untenable,  and 
after  a  time  the  Van  Roggen  scheme  was 
withdrawn. 

The  time  came,  after  ten  years  of  spade- 
work,  when  the  Hamburg -Ainerika  Coinpany 
publicly  entered  into  the  Gulf  trade.  In  Sep- 
tember, 1906,  a  line  of  steamers  was  started, 
plying  between  Hamburg,  Aden,  Muscat,  and 
all  the  principal  Gulf  ports.  The  ubiquitous 
Wonckhaus,  his  hiunble  beginnings  in  a  native 


V 


house  at  Lingah  entirely  obscured,  blossomed 
forth  as  the  accredited  agent  of  the  famous 
Hambiu-g-Amerika  Company,  with  the  benedic- 
tions of  the  mighty  Herr  Ballin  himself.  The 
arrival  of  the  first  German  steamer  was  long 
remembered  in  the  Gulf.  It  entered  eacfi  port 
with  a  band  playing  "  Deutschland  iiber 
Alles,"  and  an  air  which  the  listening  Britons 
fondly  supposed  to  be  "  God  Save  the  King." 
Its  cargo  appeared  to  consist  chiefly  of  unlimited 
quantities  of  ropy  German  champagne,  which 
was  lavishly  dispensed  to  all  and  sundry.  A 
dinner  of  innumerable  courses  was  served  at 
every  stopping-place.  All  were  welcome.  It 
was  a  wonderful  time  for  the  satellites  of  the 
patient  Wonckliaus. 

The  Hamburg-Amerika  cargoes  were  not 
long  confined  to  chainpagne.  The  service  was 
soon  reduced  to  a  monthly  one,  but  the  German 
trade  grew,  although  the  disturbed  internal 
condition  of  Southern  Persia  greatly  affected 
business  at  all  Persian  ports.  In  the  year 
1911-12  German  imports  at  Bushire  were 
valued  at  £39,000  ;  those  of  the  United  King- 
dom and  India  at  £707,000.  Exports  from 
Bushire  to  Germany  were  valued  at  £67,000  ; 
those  to  the  United  Ivingdom  and  India  at 
£394,000.  At  Bunder  Abbas  in  the  same  year 
German  imports  amounted  to  £20,000,  and 
British  and  Indian  £322,000  ;  exports  to  Ger- 
many  £14,  to  Great  Britain  and  India,  £147,000. 
On  the  other  hand,  German  trade  with  Basra 
and  Mesopotamia-  increased  very  rapidly, 
showing  in  1912  a  growth  of  33  per  cent,  in 
imports  and  of  28  per  cent,  in  exports.  The 
figures  were :  imports,  £528,415 ;  exports, 
£375,760.  The  British  figures  were  vastly 
larger,  but  German  trade  made  steady  pro- 
gress   at    Basra    until    the    war    stopped     it. 


BRITISH     TELEGRAPH     STATION     ON     HENJAM     ISLAND. 
The  island  of  Kishm  lies  across  the  chanael. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


99 


CROWD     AT     BASRA     WATCHING     THE     BRITISH     ENTRY. 


The  Hambxirg-Amerika  steamer?,  are  believed 
to  have  been  heavily  subsidized. 

When  the  negotiations  between  Great  Britain, 
Germany,  Turkey  and  other  countries,  with 
regard  to  the  Baghdad  Railway,  gradually 
took  shape  in  London,  Germany  for  the  time 
being  abandoned  her  clumsy  attempts  to  obtain 
a  foothold  in  the  Gulf  by  surreptitious  means. 
It  will  be  seen  that  by  the  vigilance  of  the 
British  representatives  on  the  spot  she  was 
invariably  foiled  at  every  ]>oint.  She  saw, 
however,  that  the  advantages  she  had  failed 
to  gain  by  direct  action  might  probably  be 
stealthily  obtained  in  course  of  time  by  diplo- 
matic action.  British  interests  in  the  Persian 
Gulf  Were  less  understood  and  less  rigidly 
guarded  in  London. 

During  the  three  years  before  the  war  an 
agreement  between  Great  Britain  and  Turkey 
was  drafted  after  very  long  discussion.  It 
provided  that  the  terminus  of  the  Baghdad 
Railway  was  to  be  at  Basra,  its  natural  outlet, 
and  that  no  extension  to  Koweit  was  to  be 
built  tmless  the  consent  of  Great  Britain  was 
first  obtained.  Turlcey  further  agreed  to 
abandon  her  entirely  mythical  pretensions  to 
suzerainty  over  the  Bahrein  Islands,  Muscat, 
and  the  territory  of  the  Trucial  Chiefs,  a 
valueless  concession,  because  her  suzerainty 
had  never  existed,  the  claim  was  quite  modern, 
and  it  had  never  been  acknowledged  by  the 
rulers  directly  concerned.     She  also  undertook 


to  evacuate  the  peninsula  of  El  Katar,  an  almost 
equally  empty  offer,  because  she  had  never 
held  more  than  a  couple  of  tiny  ports.  On 
the  other  hand.  Great  Britain  agreed  to  recog- 
nize the  suz.erainty  of  Turkey  over  Koweit, 
while  Turkey  promised  not  to  interfere  with 
the  internal  affairs  of  Koweit,  and  said  she 
would  recognize'  the  conventions  Cthere  is 
believed  to  be  one  later  than  that  of  1899) 
between  Great  Britain  and  Koweit.  The 
expediency  of  the  British  admission  was 
strongly  questioned  by  those  who  hold  that 
Turkish  pretensions  to  suzerainty  over  Koweit 
are  vague  and  indefensible.  The  agreement 
further  provided  that  a  representative  of  the 
Turkish  Government  should  in  future  reside 
at  Koweit.  It  has  been  objected  to  this  pro- 
vision that  it  would  have  opened  the  door  to 
intrigue,  and  that  it  was  at  variance  with  the 
spirit  of  the  convention  of  1899.  A  British 
naval  officer  in  1901  ordered  off  the  Sultan's 
representative.  Ten  years  later  the  British 
Government  were  ]3roposing  to  admit  him, 
although  in  the  Gulf  every  Turkish  official 
had  become  a  German  agent. 

The  agreement  with  Turkey,  which  had 
been  drafted  with  the  full  cognizance  and  practi- 
cally in  consultation  with  the  German  Govern- 
ment, was  never  signed,  although  the  negoti- 
ations were  intermittently  continued  almost 
until  the  outbreak  of  war.  At  the  same  time 
an     agreement     between     Great    Britain    and 


100 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


< 
U 


< 

o 
z 

z 

O 


si 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


101 


Germany  with  regard  to  the  Baghdad  Railway, 
^Mesopotamia,  and  other  matters,  was  also 
drafted.  A  telegram  from  Berlin  stated  that 
it  was  initialled  in  London  by  Sir  Edward  Grey 
and  Prince  Lichnowsky  in  the  middle  of  June, 
six  weeks  before  the  war.  It  was  not  signed, 
and  the  precise  character  of  its  contents  was 
not  disclosed.  During  the  two  or  three  years 
before  the  war  the  construction  of  the  Baghdad 
Railway  was  steadily  continued,  and  work 
was  begim.  on  the  section  between  Baghdad 
and  Basra.  The  full  story  of  the  Baghdad 
Railway,  which  has  far  wider  ramifications 
than  have  here  been  touched  upon,  does  not 
require  recital  in  connexion  with  the  campaign 
in  the  delta. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  while  Turkey  was 
demonstrating  in  London  her  inalienable  claims 
to  the  Arabian  region  of  El  Hasa  and  to  the 
western  shores  of  the  Gulf  south  of  Koweit 
territory,  she  was  rudely  evicted  from  these 
areas.  In  the  summer  of  1913  the  redoubtable 
Ibn  Saud  crowned  his  victorious  career  by 
sweeping  the  Turks,  lock,  stock  and  barrel,  out 
of  El  Hasa  and  all  Eastern  Arabia,  probably 
never  to  return.  The  remnants  of  their  troops 
arrived  on  the  Gulf  coast  in  a  sorry  plight,  and 
were  rescued  by  a  British  steamer.  Their 
disappearance  did  not  prevent  the  British 
Goverrmaent  from  solemnly  assenting  to  tiie 
demarcation  of  the  Turkish  "  possessions  "  in 
Eastern  Arabia,  and  from  continuing  to  discuss 
at  inordinate  length  the  Turkish  "  right  "  to  a 
long  section  of  the  Gulf  coast  which  the  Turks 
had  filched  less  than  forty  years  before,  and 
from  which  they  had  been  ingloriously  expelled. 

The  story  of  the  advent  of  Germany  into  the 
Persian  Gulf,  and  of  the  results  which  followed 
therefrom,  has  been  told  at  some  length  and  in 
considerable  detail  for  a  special  reason.  It  is 
probably  the  only  instance  on  record — except 
perhaps  Morocco — in  which  German  methods 
of  "world-expansion"  can  be  traced  from  the 
very  earliest  beginnings  down  to  the  latest  phase. 
We  see  the  v^iole  process  at  work,  from  the 
modest  arrival  of  an  obscure  gentleman  from 
Hamburg  upon  the  sun-steeped  shoi'es  of  the 
Clarence  Straits,  down  to  the  noisy  appearance 
of  the  big  steamer  with  its  stewards'  band,  and 
the  cargoes  of  railway  material  which  were 
meant  to  make  Basra  and  its  river  the  Hamburg 
of  the  East.  We  see  the  first  crude  attempts 
to  seize  unconsidered  islets ;  the  schemes 
for  obtaining  concessions  by  illicit  means  ; 
the      quiet      manufactiu-e     of     "  international 


incidents  "  ;  the  initial  half-hearted  attempts 
to  question  the  validity  of  the  British  position  ; 
the  tentative  unleashing  of  the  German  Press  ; 
the  entry  of  the  great  financiers,  with  their 
web  of  intrigue  ;  the  transference  of  issues 
which  seem  unimportant,  but  are  really  vital, 
to  the  European  Chancelleries  ;  and,  finally, 
the  dangerous  stage  of  agreements,  by  which 
Great  Britain  is  to  be  tempted  by  smooth 
words  to  open  the  door  for  the  destruction 
of  interests  patiently  won  by  centuries  of 
effort.  It  is  all  there — a  picture  of  German 
world-politics  in  miniature.  Each  isolated 
incident  is  trivial  in  itself  ;  collectively  they 
mean  much. 

It  may  be  argued  that  Germany  had  an  entire 
right  to  establish  and  extend  her  trade  around 
the  shores  of  this  inland  sea.  Of  course  she  had. 
No  one  has  ever  dreamed  of  questioning  her 
right  to  trade  or  to  build  railways.  What  was 
questioned  was  her  motives  and  some  of  her 
acts.  It  was  the  combination  of  commercial 
effort  with  political  action,  so  lucidly  explained 
by  the  Berliner  Tagehlatt,  which  roused  British 
hostility  to  the  doings  of  Germany  in  the 
Persian  Gulf.  On  innumerable  Gorman  plat- 
forms the  ultimate  aims  of  Germany  in  the 
]\Iiddle  East  were  expounded  with  arrogance 
and  without  reserve.  Countless  German  books 
dealt  with  the  same  theme.  The  intention  \\'as 
to  supplant  and  replace  British  influence  in 
these  regions,  and  not  to  supplement  it.  To 
that  great  end  all  the  German  efforts  were 
in  reality  directed. 

By  what  right,  it  may  further  be  aslced,  did 
Great  Britain  endeavour  to  resist  German 
expansion  in  these  waters  ?  Had  she  any  real 
authority  for  her  claims  to  paramountcy  beyond 
self-interest  and  the  need  for  guarding  India  ? 
It  remains  to  answer  these  natural  questions 
and  to  define  the  solid  grounds  upon  which  the 
British  position  in  the  Persian  Gulf  is  based. 

Great  Britain  had  taken  nothing  for  herself 
in  the  Gulf;  had  pi'eserved  peace  aroimd  its 
shores,  and  had  given  equal  opportunities  to  all. 
That  is  the  sum  of  her  case.  She  kept  tlie 
peace  of  the  Gulf  vmaided  and  unsupported. 
She  sought  no  peculiar  privileges.  Sho  ae- 
(iuircd  no  territory.  She  held  point  aftrr 
point  in  the  Gulf,  and  gave  them  all  back,  save 
only  a  patch  of  land  at  Basidu,  on  tlie  island  of 
Kishm,  and  her  telegraph  station  on  the  island 
of  Hen  jam.  Every  nation  was  able  to  benefit 
by  her  efforts,  and  trade  was  unrestricted. 
But   if   she   imposed   a  self-denying   ordinance 


102 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


<^^mJ^\ 


[By  Permission  of  "  lUuslrated  Loidon  Xews." 

JUNCTION     OF    TIGRIS     AND     EUPHRATES     AT     KURNA. 
Union  Jack  floating  on  Governor's  House,  afterwards  occupied  by  British  General  and    Staff.       All    the 
houses  were  loopholed,  and    much  damaged  by  British  fire.       Two    Krupp  guns   among    the    palm    trees; 

mountain  gun  near  Governor's  House. 


upon  herself,  slie  imposed  it  equallj'  on  otJiers. 
She  could  brook  no  rivalry  in  the  Gulf,  and, 
above  all,  she  could  not  contemplate  the  creation 
of  territorial  interests  by  any  other  Power. 

The  first  Englishman  who  ever  visited  the 
Gulf  was  Ralph  Fitch,  who  traversed  it  from 
end  to  end  in  1583,  in  the  reign  of  Queen 
Elizabeth,  in  the  company  of  three  other 
Englishmen.  They  were  captured  by  the 
Portuguese  and  sent  to  Goa,  being  the  first  of 
the  English  to  set  foot  in  India.  Thus  they 
made  the  acquaintance  of  the  country  from  the 
inside  of  a  Portuguese  gaol.  The  object  of  Fitch 
was  the  development  of  trade,  and  his  journey 
was  one  of  the  occurrences  which  led  to  the 
formation  of  the  organization  which  ultiinately 
became  the  East  India  Company.  It  was  not, 
however,  until   1618  that  the  British  flag  was 


first  flown  in  the  vicinity  of  the  Gulf.  In  that 
year  one  of  the  Company's  trading  vessels  was 
sent  from  Surat  to  Jask,  near  the  entrance  to 
the  Gulf,  where  nowadays  Great  Britain 
maintains  a  telegraph  station.  Trade  with  Jask 
continued  for  tliree  or  four  years,  but  the 
obstruction  of  the  Portuguese,  who  held  the  city 
and  island  of  Hormuz,  became  so  pronounced 
that  it  was  resolved  to  attack  them.  An 
arrangejnent  was  made  with  the  Shah  of  Persia, 
who  had  already  sent  an  army  to  besiege 
Hormuz.  Part  of  this  arrangement,  duly 
embodied  in  a  treaty,  was  that  the  Company 
were  "  constantly  to  defend  the  Gulf "  with 
warships,  as  already  noted. 

After  the  sack  of  Hormuz,  a  British  factory 
was  established  at  Bimder  Abbas.  Subse- 
quently there  were  frequent  encounters  between 


I?0O|>t     Cxn.tLMJ 


J-^^iB^ 


IBv  Permissjon  of  "  lUiistraieJ  LonJon  News,' 

SCENE    OF    ACTIONS    ON    THE    SHATT-AL-ARAB    ON    NOV.    15    AND    17 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


103 


thp  British  squadron  and  the  Dutch  and 
I'ortuguese,  as  well  as  the  Arabs,  although  it 
was  with  British  aid  that  the  Arabs  expelled 
the  Portuguese  from  Muscat.  British  prestige 
steadily  increased  in  the  Gulf  during  the  next 
century  and  a  half,  and  the  British  flag  \vas 
both  respected  and  feared.  Frequent  help 
was  given  to  the  Persians,  who  owed  it  to  the 
British  that  they  did  not  become  a  nation 
without  a  seaboard.  The  survey  of  the  Gulf 
was  begun  by  the  Indian  Navy  in  1785  and 
thus  was  set  on  foot  an  undertaking  which 
continued  to  the  time  of  the  great  war.  Both 
the  charts  and  the  lights  of  the  Gulf  were 
solely  the  outcome  of  British  enterprise. 

The  greatest  work  Great  Britain  tmdertook 
in  the  Gulf  was  the  suppression  of  piracy. 
The  Arab  tribes  seem  to  have  always  fought 
one  another  on  sea  and  land,  and  to  have 
occasionally  united  to  attack  the  passing 
stranger  ;  but  they  never  really  entered  upon 
organized  and  persistent  piracy  till  they  were, 
at  the  beginning  of  last  century,  welded  together 
by  the  great  Wahabi  movement  in  Arabia.  All 
along  the  Pirate  Coast  there  are  lagoons  and 
,  backwaters,  in  which  the  pirates  sheltered  their 
vessels,  and  behind  which  their  towns  were 
built.  The  boldest  of  the  pirates  were  the 
Joasmi  tribe,  whose  headquarters  were  at 
Ras-ul-Ivheima. 

By  1806  the  pirates  had  become  so  aggressive 
that  the  British  cornered  a  Joasmi  fleet  off 
the  island  of  Kishm,  and  a  treaty  was  signed 
at  Bunder  Abbas.  The  pirates,  however,  cared 
little  for  treaties,  and  soon  recommenced  their 
work  of  depredation.  At  times  they  even 
attacked  the  Company's  cruisers,  and  when 
they  boarded  and  captured  the  small  British 
warship  Sylph,  part  of  a  squadron  carrying 
Sir  Harford  Jones's  Mission  to  Persia,  it  was 
felt  that  strong  reprisals  were  necessary.  A 
military  expedition,  which  included  the  York 
and  Lancaster  Regiment  and  the  Loyal  North 
Lancashires,  was  dispatched  to  Ras-ul-Kheima, 
and  bm-ned  the  town  and  the  pirate  fleet. 

The  expedition  then  crossed  the  Gulf,  and 
the  town  of  Lingah  was  destroyed.  The  fortress 
of  Laft,  on  the  island  of  Kishm,  was  captiu-ed 
in  an  extraordinary  manner.  The  force  attack- 
ing the  fortress  was  beaten  off,  but  next  morn- 
ing the  British  were  astonished  to  see  the  Union 
Jack  waving  from  its  walls.  An  ofiicer  had 
gone  ashore  in  the  night,  found  that  most  of 
the  defenders  had  fled,  obtained  admission, 
and  hoisted  the  flag. 


THE    PALM     GROVE     AT    SAHIL    GAMP. 

Afterwards  the  piratical  craft  at  Shargah 
and  other  towns  on  the  Pirate  Coast  were 
destroyed,  and  finally  at  Shinas,  on  the  coast 
of  Oman,  a  thousand  Wahabis  were  killed.  It 
was  on  this  occasion  that  the  Wahabi  leader, 
the  then  Ibn  Saud,  wrote  to  the  British  authori- 
ties :  "In  truth,  then,  war  is  bitter  ;  and  only 
a  fool  engages  in  it,  as  the  poet  has  said." 

Even  this  lesson  did  not  suffice  for  the 
Joasmis.  By  1812  they  were  sweeping  the 
seas  once  more,  and  in  1815  they  had  even 
captured  a  vessel  so  far  away  as  the  coast  of 
Kathiawar,  Western  India.  In  1816  a  British 
squadron  menaced  Ras-ul-Kheima  again,  but 
made  no  impression.  In  1817  the  .Toasmis 
built  a  fort  at  Basidu,  on  the  island  of  Ivisluu. 
In  1818  they  were  ravaging  the  west  coast 
of  India,  and  in  181!)  a  fleet  of  sixty-four 
pirate  vessels,  manned  by  seven  thousand  men, 
was  off  the  coasts  of  Cutch  and  Kathiawar 

But  the  cup  of  the  iniquities  of  the  Joasmis 
was  full  to  overflowing.  A  powerful  force  was 
assembled  at  Bombay  under  Sir  William  (U-ant 
Keir,  including  the  two  British  regiments  which 
had  fought  in  the  Gulf  seven  years  before. 
Ras-ul-Kheima  was  cannonaded  and  finally 
carried  by  assault,  300  of  the  ^Vrabs  being  killed 
and  700  wounded.  The  other  Joasmi  ports 
were  visited  in  turn  and  their  fortifications 
blown  up.  At  Sohar,  on  the  Oman  coast,  there 
w£is  considerable  fighting.     Finally,  in   1820.  a 


104 


THE     TIMES    HISTOliY     OF     THE     WAR. 


[Elliott  and  Fry 

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL     SIR      ARTHUR 
BARRETT,    K.C.B. 

general  treaty  of  peace  was  concluded  with  the 
pirate  chiefs.  The  York  and  Lancaster  Regi- 
ment still  bears  the  word  "  Arabia "  on  its 
colours  in  commemoration  of  these  forgotten 
campaigns. 

Sir  William  Grant  Keir's  expedition  dealt 
piracy  in  the  Guh  its  death-blow.  The  Beni 
Yas  at  Abu  Dhabi  made  a  desperate  attempt 
to  hoist  the  blood-red  flag  again  in  1834. 
Anticipating  a  suggestion  afterwards  heard  in 


comic  opera,  they  even  prepared  boiling  oil 
in  which  to  place  the  Christians  they  captured. 
They  were  promptly  suppressed,  however, 
and  an  episode  which  began  with  cauldrons 
of  boiling  oil  ended  in  a  trial  in  the  Bombay 
High  Court.  The  various  treaties  entered 
into  with  the  leaders  of  the  tribes  on  the  Pirate 
Coast,  known  as  the  Trucial  Chiefs,  were  con- 
solidated in  the  general  treaty  of  1853.  To  this 
was  added  the  treaty  of  1892,  by  which  the 
chiefs  agreed  to  place  their  external  relations 
in  British  hands,  and  not  to  alienate  any  portion 
of  their  territories  to  foreign  Powers. 

It  would  be  too  much  to  say  that  piracy 
entirely  disappeared  from  the  Gulf.  Isolated 
acts  of  piracy  occurred  almost  every  year,  and 
they  generally  emanated  from  the  territory 
which  was  alleged  to  be  imder  Turkish  control. 
They  were  usually  swiftly  pimished,  but  there 
could  be  little  doubt  that  if  the  strong  hand  of 
the  British  was  withdra^-n,  Arab  fleets  would 
again  commence  their  depredations. 

In  suppressing  piracy  in  the  Gulf,  Great 
Britain  was  not  only  seeking  the  protection  of 
her  own  trade,  but  was  "  soUcitous  for  the 
common  good,  and  was  serving  other  nations 
as  well  as  herself."  An  almost  equally  long 
story  might  be  told  concerning  the  strenuous 
British  efforts  for  the  suppression  of  the  slave 
trade,  extending  over  many  years  and  still 
imfinished.  The  British  control  of  the  arms 
traffic  involved  heavy  expenditure  and  most 
laborious  patrols.  Sometin"ies  the  whole  East 
Indies  Squadron  was  occupied  in  tliis  work, 
and  in  1911  Admiral  Sir  Edmond  Slade  led  a 


FAO,    THE    FIRST    POINT   CAPTURED    BY    THE    BRITISH. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


105 


THE    DELTA    OF    THE    TIGRIS    AND    EUPHRATES. 


combined  naval  and  military  expedition  into 
Persian  Mekran  to  punish  gun-runners. 

The  British  sanitary  organization  did  much 
for  the  health  of  the  Gulf,  and  for  ten  years 
kept  at  bay  the  repeated  appearances  of  plague. 
The  duties  of  the  British  Resident  in  the  Gulf, 
whose  headquarters  were  at  Bushire,  were 
niany  and  varied.  He  was  by  general  consent 
the  arbiter  in  the  quarrels  between  the  different 
local  rulers,  and  was  alike  their  counsellor  and 
their  friend.  His  influence  was  always  directed 
towards  the  preservation  of  peace  and  order. 
He  composed  the  occasional  di^erences  between 
the  Trucial  Chiefs,  protected  the  coasts  of  Arabia 
and  Persia  from  external  aggression,  saved  the 
native  dhows  from  being  plundered  in  the  date 
season,  and,  as  has  already  been  said,  maintained 
order  at  the  annual  pearl  fisheries. 

The  British  claim  to  paramountcy  in  the  Gulf 
thus  rests  on  a  long  sequence  of  events  by 
which,  at  a  heavy  expenditiu-e  of  blood  and 
treasure,  we  made  it  a  haven  of  peace.  Our 
flag  was  flying  in  the  Straits  of  Oman  when  the 


Germans  plunged  into  the  Thirty  Years'  War. 
We  had  shouldered  our  burden  there  before 
the  Mayflower  sailed  from  Plymouth.  If  we 
were  to  lose  our  grip,  piracy,  slave-dealing, 
raids  and  counter-raids,  all  the  characteristics  of 
the  days  of  barbarism,  would  at  once  reappear. 
The  flare  of  burning  coast -towns,  scenes  of 
rapine  and  bloodshed,  would  instantly  remind 
us  of  oiu"  abandoned  obligation.  Having  taken 
up  the  burden,  we  ow^d  it  to  the  peoples  of  the 
Gulf,  living  in  security  imder  our  guardianshiji, 
not  to  abandon  it.  There  is  no  part  of  our 
work  in  the  world  that  can  be  contemplated 
with  greater  satisfaction.  After  we  had  per- 
formed it  for  tlu-ee  hundred  years,  Gerniany 
deliberately  prepared  to  challenge  our  presence 
and  our  piu-pose  there.  The  Gulf  was  her  goal, 
and  she  was  not  satisfied  with  the  opportunities 
for  trade  which  were  open  to  all  nations  alike. 
The  resistance  we  offered  to  her  plans  \\as  no 
more  than  oiu"  bounden  duty. 

There    is    no    need    to    contend    that    Groat 
Britain     exercised     peculiar     unselfishness     irk 


lor, 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


THE    DAMAGED    CUSTOMS    HOUSE    AT    KURNA. 
How  the  Royal    Navy  left  it. 


this  self-imposed  task.  We  were  unselfish  in 
our  manner  of  performing  it,  but  the  fact  need 
not  be  disgviised  that  we  were  driven  to  assume 
responsibilities  in  the  Gulf  mainly  by  considera- 
tions of  self-interest.  The  maintenance  of 
British  predominance  in  the  Gulf  is  an  essential 
part  of  the  defence  of  India.  The  mere  presence 
of  another  Power  in  the  Persian  Gulf,  whether  its 
post  be  fortified  or  unfortified,  would  have  a 
gravely  unsettling  effect  upon  India.  The 
people  of  India  would  not  stop  to  think  whether, 
from  such  a  post,  their  country  could  be  really 
threatened.  The  fact  that  another  flag  was 
flying  in  a  region  where  the  British  had  been 
dominant  for  three  hundred  years,  and  supreme 
for  more  than  a  century,  would  suffice  to  per- 
suade them  that  our  strength  was  declining, 
and  such  confidence  as  we  now  inspire  would 
instantly  be  diminished.  It  is  not  from 
strategic  reasons  alone  that  we  are  compelled 
to  maintain  our  special  position  in  tlie  Gulf. 
We  have  to  think  also  of  the  moral  effect  which 
the  intrusion  of  another  Power  would  produce 
upon  India. 

The  truth  of  these  contentions  has  been 
demonstrated  by  a  dispassionate  and  entirely 
impartial  observer.  So  long  ago  as  1902  the 
late  Admiral  INIahan  declared  that  he  saw  "  the 
question  of  the  Persian  Gulf,  and  of  South 
Pei"sia  in  connexion  with  it,  clearly  visible  upon 


the  horizon."  He  warned  us  that  "  concession 
in  the  Persian  Gulf,  whether  by  formal  arrange- 
ment [with  other  Powers],  or  by  neglect  of  the 
local  commercial  interests  which  now  underlie 
poUtical  and  military  control,  will  imperil 
Great  Britain's  naval  situation  in  the  Farther 
East,  her  political  position  in  India,  her  com- 
mercial interests  in  both,  and  the  Imperial  tie 
between  herself  and  Australasia."  Unfor- 
tunately his  warning,  and  all  warnings,  were 
disregarded  when  the  British  Government  began 
to  dabble  in  Anglo-Turkish  and  Anglo-German 
agreements. 

In  a  striking  passage  he  defined  the  question 

thus  : 

Great  Britain,  in  the  clear  failure  of  Turkey  and  Persia, 
is  the  nation  first — that  is,  most — concerned.  She  is  not 
so  only  in  her  own  right,  and  that  of  her  own  people, 
but  in  the  yet  more  binding  one  of  Imperial  obligation 
to  a  great  and  politically  helpless  ward  of  the  Empire — 
to  India  and  her  teeming  population.  In  her  own  right 
and  duty  she  Ls,  as  regards  the  maintenance  of  order,  in 
nctual  possession,  having  discharged  this  office  to  the 
Gulf  for  several  generations.  Doiibtless,  here  as  in 
Egypt,  now  that  the  constructive  work  has  been  done, 
she  might  find  others  who  would  willinglj'  relieve  her  of 
the  burden  of  maintenance  ;  but  as  regards  such  transfer, 
the  decision  of  acceptance  would  rest  by  general  custom 
with  the  present  possessor,  and  to  her  the  question  is  not 
one  merely  of  convenience,  but  of  duty,  arising  from, 
and  closely  involved  with  existing  conditions,  which 
are  the  more  imperative  because  they  are  plants  of  mature 
growth,  with  roots  deep  struck  and  closely  intertwined 
in  the  soil  of  a  past  history.  These  conditions  are 
doubtless  manifold,  but  m  last  analysis  they  are  sub- 
stantiallv  three. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE    WAU. 


107 


First,  her  security  in  India,  which  would  be  materially 
nfiected  by  an  adverse  change  in  the  political  control  of 
the  Gulf. 

Secondly,  the  safety  of  tl:e  great  sea  route,  com- 
uiercial  and  military,  to  India  and  the  Farther  East,  on 
which  British  shippnig  is  still  actually  the  chief  traveller, 
though  with  a  notable  dinnnnlion  that  demands  national 
attention. 

Thirdly,  the  economic  and  commercial  welfare  of 
India,  which  can  act  politically  only  through  the  Empire, 
a  dependence  which  greatly  enhances  obligation. 

The  control  of  the  Persian  Gulf  by  a  foreign  State  of 
considerable  naval  potentiality,  a  fleet  in  being  there 
based  upon  a  strong  military  port,  would  reproduce  the 
relations  of  Cadiz,  Gibraltar,  and  Malta  to  the  Mediter- 
ranean. It  would  flank  all  the  routes  to  the  Farther 
East,  to  India,  and  to  .Australia,  the  last  two  actually 
internal  to  the  Empire  regarded  as  a  political  system  ; 
and  although  Great  Britain  iniquestionably  would  check 
such  a  fleet,  so  placed,  by  a  division  of  her  own,  it  might 
well  require  a  detachment  large  enough  to  affect  seriously 
the  general  strength  of  her  naval  position. 

Such  a  weighty  pronouncement  needs  no 
further  emphasis.  It  only  remains  to  add  that 
among  the  numerous  declarations  made  by 
Great  Britain  on  this  subject,  the  chief  is  that 
spoken  by  Lord  Lansdowne,  then  Foreign 
Secretary,  in  the  House  of  I^ords  on  May  5,  1903. 
He  said  :  "I  say  it  without  hesitation,  we 
should  regard  the  establishment  of  a  naval 
base  or  of  a  fortified  port  in  the  Persian  Gulf  by 
any  other  Power  as  a  very  grave  menace  to 
British  interests,  and  we  should  certainly  resist 
it  by  all  the  means  at  our  disposal."  That  is 
our  Monroe  Doctrine  in  the  Middle  East,  and 
from  it  we  cannot  depart.  It  may  fitly  close 
this  preliminary  examination  of  the  problems 
of  the  Persian  Gulf  and  the  countries  around  it. 

On  October  29,  1914,  the  German  warships 
had  bombarded  Russian  towns  on  the  Black 
Sea  coast,  and  on  October  30  Sir  Louis  Mallet 
asked  at  Constantinople  for  his  passports.  The 
rupture  of  relations  between  Great  Britain  and 
Turkey  had  been  fully  expected  by  the  small 
British  community  at  Basra,  and  many  of  the 
British  subjects  there  left  for  Mohammerah,  in 
Persian  territory,  on  October  27.  H.M.S. 
Espiegle  had  been  lying  in  the  Karun  River 
off  IMohammerah  for  some  weeks.  She  is  a 
gunboat  of  1,070  tons,  with  a  speed  of  13  J  knots, 
and  is  armed  with  six  4-inch  guns.  When  the 
people  at  Mohammerah  noticed  the  little 
Espiegle  clearing  for  action  on  October  31, 
they  knew  that  a  conflict  was  near.  Late  that 
afternoon  several  more  Englishmen  arrived  at 
Mohammerah  from  Basra,  but  when  others 
tried  to  leave  Basra  still  later  in  the  day  they 
were  detained.*  On  Monday,  November  2,  the 
British  Consul,  Mr.  BuUard,  and  the  remaining 
juembers  of  the  British  colony,  embarked  on  a 
Turkish   steamer.     All   save   the   Consul   were 


compelled  to  disembark  again,  as  the  Governor 
of  Basra  announced  that  he  had  received 
telegraphic  instructions  from  Constantinople 
to  detain  everybody  except  Mr.  Bullard.  It 
is  satisfactory  to  be  able  to  add  that  all  the 
persons  detained  were  found  safe  when  Basra 
was  afterwards  captured. 

The  same  thing  was  reported  to  have  hap- 
pened at  Baghdad.  Only  the  British  Consul 
and  his  family,  and  the  French  Consul,  were 
allowed  to  leave.  They  made  the  voyage  down 
the  Tigris  in  one  of  the  laimches  of  Messrs. 
Lynch,  the  Ishtar.  The  laimcn  was  com- 
mandeered on  arrival  at  Basra,  and  the  party 
continued  their  journey  in  a  Turldsh  steamer. 
The  '  detained  Etu-opeans  were  afterwards 
reported  safe,  but  it  was  subsequently  said  that 
they  had  been  removed  to  a  city  in  Asia  Minor. 

The  Government  of  India,  which  had  charge 
of  the  Gulf  operations,  had  been  equally  fore;- 
warned.  Some  time  before  the  outbreak  of 
hostilities  they  had  deemed  it  prudent  to 
strengthen  their  forces  in  the  Gulf.  The  Poena 
Brigade,  under  Brigadier  -  General  W.  S. 
Delamain,  had  been  sent  to  the  island  of 
Bahrein.  It  included  the  2nd  Dorsets,  the 
20th  Infantry  (Brownlow's  Punjabis),  the 
117th  Mahrattas,  and  the  104th  Welle.sley's 
Rifles.  It  was  accompanied  by  the  23rd 
(Peshawar)  Mountain  Battery,  and  the  .30th 
Mountain  Battery. 


[I-Hiof  :nui  I-'rv. 

BRIGADIER-GENERAL    W.   S.    DELAMAIN. 


108 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


[Elliott  and  Fry. 
COLONEL    SIR    PERCY    COX, 
Britiih  Resident  and  Consul-General  In  the 
Persian   Gulf. 


In  due  course  the  Brigade  re-embarked,  and 
reached  the  bar  at  the  niouth  of  the  Shatt-al- 
Arab  on  November  7.  The  bar  is  an  immense 
and  increasing  obstruction  of  extremely  soft 
mud,  through  which  there  is  only  one  good 
navigable  channel.  The  Turks  have  often  bi.-n 
rightly  blamed  for  not  dredging  it,  but  on  the 
other  hand  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  mud 
is  so  liquid  that  dredging  operations  will  not 
be  easy.  At  the  outer  edge  of  the  bar  no 
land  was  visible,  nothing  but  an  expaiLse  of 
brown  silt-laden  waters.  The  aspect  was  very 
like  that  of  the  Taku  bar,  outside  the  Peiho 
river  which  leads  to  Tientsin. 

As  the  sliips  drew  nearer  the  shore  low  green 
banks  were  revealed,  and  a  fiat  country  which 
might  have  been  mistaken  for  the  shores  of  the 
Scheldt  were  it  not  for  the  green  date  groves. 
About  three  miles  along  the  bank  the  village 
of  Fao  came  into  view.  It  is  a  small  place  with 
about  400  inhabitants,  chiefly  herdsmen  and 
cultivators.  The  Turkish  mud  fort  was  almost 
hidden.  The  cable  station  consisted  of  a  couple 
of  two-storied  buildings,  occupied  respectively 
by  the  Turkish  operators  and  the  officials  of  the 
Indo-Eiu-opean  Telegraph  Companj^  Persia 
lay  on  the.  other  side  of  the  broad  and  muddy 
stream.  Its  defences  were  represented  by  a 
square  fort  with  bastioned  corners,  nearly 
opposite  the  cable  station. 

The   taking   of    Fao    was   a   verj'    brief   epi- 


sode. H.M.S.  Odin  (Commander  Cathca'-t  R. 
\\'ason),  a  sister  gunboat  to  the  Eipiegle, 
together  with  the  armed  launch  Sirdar, 
bombarded  the  Turkish  fort  and  reduced  it  to 
silence  in  about  an  hour.  A  portion  of  the 
brigade  together  with  a  force  of  marines  from 
the  battleship  Ocean,  which  lay  outside,  was 
landed,  and  the  town  was  occupied.  The 
invasion  of  Chaldea  had  begun.  It  was  not  the 
flrst  time  that  a  British  force  had  sailed  into  the 
Shatt-al-Arab.  During  the  war  with  Persia 
early  in  1857  Sir  Henry  Havelock  entered  the 
river  with  4,000  men  and  took  ^Mohammerah. 
On  that  occasion  the  Seaforth  Highlanders  and 
the  Staffordshire  Regiment  participated.  The 
Seaforths  afterwards  actually  ascended  the 
Karrni  River  and  captiu-ed  the  city  of  Ahwaz, 
an  exploit  which  was  almost  mamediately 
forgotten  owing  to  the  outbreak  of  the  Indian 
Mutiny. 

Having  made  good  his  position  at  Fao,  where 
he  left  a  detachment  of  native  infantry,  General 
Delamain  proceeded  more  than  thirty  miles 
up  the  river  with  the  bulk  of  his  brigade.  The 
voyage  cannot  at  any  time  be  called  picturesque. 
The  Turkish  bank  is  clothed  with  trees,  largely 
date  groves,  behind  which  stretch  swamps  and 
desert.  The  Persian  bank  is  less  wooded,  but 
rather  dreary,  though  the  iand  is  green  enough. 
These  lower  areas  of  the  delta  pro%ide  excellent 
snipe  shooting,  as  many  an  exiled  naval  officer 
has  f oimd.  The  edges  of  the  banks  are  soft  and 
muddy,  and  rather  steep.  Landing  is  ex- 
ceedingly difficult,  as  General  Delamain 
discovered  when  the  time  came  for  hun  to 
disembark  his  force. 

The  reason  he  had  hurried  on  became  plain 
to  all  after  the  expedition  had  steamed  onward 
for  tliree  or  four  hours.  There  on  the  bank  of 
the  island  of  Abadan,  on  the  Persian  side,  stood 
the  new  and  spacious  refinerj-  of  tlie  Anglo- 
Persian  Oil  Comjjanj',  which  is  destined  to 
supply  oil  for  the  ships  of  the  Royal  Xa\'y. 
Its  large  electric  power  station,  and  thf 
installation  for  making  tins  and  cans  for 
kerosene  and  benzine,  offered  the  enemy 
tempting  opportiuiities  for  destruction.  H.^l.S. 
Espiegle  was  guarding  the  works  when  the 
expedition  arrived.  The  night  before,  two 
small  Turkish  motor  gunboats,  built  by 
Thornycroft,  had  come  down  the  river  after 
siuiset.  The  Espiegle  was  waiting  for  them, 
and  after  an  exchange  of  shots  drove  them  off. 
Tliat  morning  the  Espiegle  had  gone  up  stream 
and  round  the  bend  and  shelled  a  small  Turkish 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


109 


post,  and  also  a  custom -hovise.  The  Turks 
had  some  guns  concealed,  and  replied  with 
vigour. 

The  oU  refinery  at  Abadan  is  the  outcome  of  a 
concession  granted  in  1901  to  Mr.  W.  K. 
D'Arcy,  a  British  subject,  to  exploit  petroli- 
fisroios  areas  throughout  the  Persian  Empire. 
Mr.  D'Arcy  commenced  the  work  himself,  but 
the  concession  was  acquired  in  1909  by  the 
Anglo-Persian  Oil  Company,  a  purely  British 
organization.  The  late  Lord  Strathcona  was 
largely  instrumental  in  forming  the  company, 
and  remained  its  chairman  untU  liis  death. 
When  the  project  was  placed  before  him  his 
characteristic  question  was,  "  Will  it  help  the 
Empire  ?  "  On  being  assured  that  the  project 
had  Imperial  importance,  he  supported  it  with 
enthusiasm.  When  the  Board  of  Admiralty 
sought  to  adopt  oil  fuel  on  a  large  scale  for 
British  warships,  it  became  desirable  for  the 
Government  to  acquire  direct  access  to  some 
source  of  oil  supply  which  would  save  them  from 
the  danger  of  being  at  the  mercy  of  oil  mono- 
polists. At  the  instanec  of  Lord  Fisher,  an 
Admiralty  Commission,  of  wliich  Vice-Admiral 
Sir  Edmond  Slade  was  the  head,  was  sent  out 
very  quietly  in  October,  1913,  to  report  upon 
the  Anglo -Persian  oilfields.  Their  report  was 
so  favourable  that  in  June,  1911,  the  House  of 
■Commons,  at  the  request  of  Mr.  Winston 
Churchill,  decided  that  the  Government  should 


acqviire  share  or  loan  capital  in  the  Anglo - 
Persian  Oil  Company  to  the  extent  of 
£2,200,000. 

Though  the  company  "  proved  "  oil  at 
various  points  in  Southern  and  Western 
Persia,  its  first  large  soiu-ce  of  supply  was  at 
Maidan-i-Naphtun  (the  Plain  of  Naphtha), 
about  150  miles  north-east  of  the  refinery  at 
Abadan.  A  pipe-line  was  constructed  between 
Abadan  and  Maidan-i-Naphtun,  but  tJie 
sujjply  was  so  enormous  that  only  a  very 
few  wells  had  been  tapped.  The  oil  flows  from 
the  wells  to  large  storage  tanks  on  the  field, 
whence  it  is  pumped  into  the  pipe -line  from  a 
pumping  station  at  Tembi,  four  miles  away. 
The  capacity  of  the  line  is  about  350,000  tons 
per  annum,  and  the  oil  available  seems  illimit- 
able. The  Abadan  refinery  is  able  to  deal  with 
about  1,000  tons  of  crude  oil  daily.  The  chief 
offices  of  the  company  are  at  Mohammerah, 
and  there  is  a  large  British  staff  at  Abadan. 
After  the  Government  acquired  an  interest  in 
the  company,  preparations  were  begun  for 
the  construction  of  a  second  pipe-line  which 
would  increase  production  by  about  a  million 
tons  a  year. 

It  was  always  recognized  that  the  pipe-line 
and  the  Abadan  works  would  be  to  a  certain 
extent  vulnerable  in  the  event  of  a  sudden 
outbreak  of  war  with  Tvu-key.  The  subsequent 
invasion  of  Persia  and  the  temporary  capture 


ANGLO-PERSIAN    OIL    COMPANY'S    REFINERIES    ON    ABAUAN    INLAND. 


110 


THK     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE     WAR. 


of  Tabriz,  showed  that,  as  was  anticipated, 
Turkey  had  no  more  intention  of  respecting 
the  netitrality  of  Persia  than  Germany  was 
willing  to  refrain  from  molesting  Belgium.  The 
Government,  however,  felt  reasonably  confident 
that  they  could  protect  their  own  property, 
and  they  were  instantly  successful  on  this 
occasion  at  Abadan.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  Royal  Navy  was  not  in  the  least  degree 
dependent  upon  Persian  oil  when  the  war 
broke  out.  Great  Britain  entered  the  war  with 
immense  reserves  of  fuel  oil  stored  in  the 
United  Ivingdom,  which  was  an  essential 
feature  of  Admiralty  policy. 

General  Delamain  proceeded  past  the  Abadan 
oil  .works  and  round  the  bend  of  the  river, 
anchoring  half  an  hour  later  at  Saniyeh,  about 
35  miles  from  the  sea.  Here  he  disembarked 
his  brigade  on  the  Turkish  banlc  without 
opposition,  but  with  some  difficulty,  the  bank 
being  about  ten  feet  high,  and  very  mnddy  and 
slippery.  The  brigade  at  once  proceeded  to 
make  a  strong  entrenched  camp  close  to  the 
river,  while  awaiting  the  arrival  of  reinforce- 
ments. It  was  not  left  long  in  peace.  At 
dawn  on  November  11  the  outposts  were 
attacked  by  a  considerable  Turkish  force, 
which  had  evidently  hurried  down  from 
i>asra.  The  Turks  were  quickly  checked 
by  the  117th  Malu-attas,  but  they  had  estab- 


lished themselves  in  a  village  from  which  they 
could  only  be  dislodged  by  a  considerable  effort. 
The  20th  Punjabis  made  a  counter-attack, 
supported  by  fire  from  a  mountain  battery. 
Major  Ducat  was  mortally  wounded  at  close 
quarters  while  gallantly  leading  a  company 
of  the  Punjabis  against  the  village.  The 
enemy  were  finally  routed,  and  as  they  with- 
drew the  maxims  got  in  on  their  flank.  The 
Turkish  casualties  were  believed  to  amount  to 
about  80.  The  British  casualties  were  very 
few,  but  Captain  Franlcs,  of  the  Mahrattas,  was 
seriously  wovuided. 

On  November  13,  soon  after  daybreak, 
Lieutenant-General  Sir  Arthur  Barrett,  who 
had  been  placed  in  command  of  the  operations 
against  Basra,  arrived  with  several  transports 
off  the  bar  at  the  mouth  of  the  Shatt-el-Arab. 
The  reinforcements  included  the  Ahmednagar 
Brigade,  vmder  Brigadier -General  W.  H.  Dobbie, 
C.B.,  consisting  of  the  1st  Battalion  Oxford  and 
Bucks  Light  Infantry,  the  119th  Infantry  (the 
Mooltan  Regiment),  and  the  103rd  Mahrattas  ; 
and  the  Belgaum  Brigade,  under  Brigadier- 
General  C.  I.  Fry,  consisting  of  the  2nd  Nor- 
folks,  the  110th  Mahrattas,  the  120th  Raj- 
putana  Infantry,  and  the  7th  Rajputs.  There 
were  also  tliree  batteries  of  the  Royal  Field 
Artillerj^  the  48th  Pioneers,  the  3rd  Sappers 
and  Miners,  and  the  33rd  Light  Cavalry,  the 


PREPARING    RIVER    STEAMERS    FOR    THE    KURNA    ADVANCE. 

Two   field    guns  on  S.S.    "Medjidieh"  in  foreground.     Two  other  guns  on  S.S.  "  Blosse  Lynch"  beyond. 

Vessels  protected  with  grain  bags  and  bales. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR: 


111 


1 

"    \ 

g        J    .  1    "^                        E  ^ 

1                 ^^                     Hi      !■      ■                     y.^^f                    -I«    '"    ^ 

Mpi^^ 

'^^^^^Sl^M 

1      •■    . . 

1 

■ 

THE    HAMBURG-AMERIKA    S.S.     '  ECKBATANA,'     SUNK    BY    THE    TURKS    IN    THE 

SHATT-AL-ARAB. 

Three  vessels  were  sunk  here,  but  the  obstruction  proved  inadequate. 


last-named  regiment  being  xinder  the  command 
of  Lieut. -Col.  Wogan  Browne.  The  33rd  Cavalry 
won  distinction  in  the  Gulf  in  1857,  and  their 
charges  at  the  battle  of  Khooshaub  have  a  very 
special  place  in  Indian  cavalry  annals.  The 
troops  named  by  no  means  represent  the  total 
force  employed  in  Mesopotamia,  but  they  were 
ihe  first  reinforcements  to  arrive. 

On  the  14th  the  transports  crossed  the  bar 
at  6  a.m.,  and  accompanied  by  various  warships 
steamed  up  the  river.  A  cold  breeze  was  blow- 
ing, and  the  troops  began  to  notice  the  change 
from  the  climate  of  India,  and  to  put  on  thicker 
clothing.  It  can  be  very  cold  in  the  Shatt-al- 
Arab  in  the  winter  months,  and  from  the  tropics 
the  expedition  had  passed  to  a  region  where 
fires  are  almost  a  necessity  at  such  a  season. 
Saniyeh  was  reached  at  10.30  a.m.,  and  Colonel 
Sir  Percy  Cox  at  once  camie  off  to  see  Sir 
Arthur  Barrett. 

Sir  Percy  Cox  had  long  been  British  Resident 
and  Consxil- General  in  the  Persian  Gulf,  and 
had  a  knowledge  of  Persian,  Arabian,  Meso- 
potamian,  and  Gulf  problems  to  which  no  other 
living  Englishman  could  lay  claim.  Though 
perhaps  little  known  outside  India,  he  had  filled 
a  distinguished  and  honourable  place  in  the 
more  recent  chapters  of  the  story  of  Great 
Britain  in  the  Middle  East.  He  was  at  once 
soldier  and  diplomatist,  but  peacemaker  most 
of  all.  For  years  he  had  held  the  Persian 
Gulf   in   the   hollow   of   his   hand.     There   was 


not  a  sheikh  upon  its  shores  who  did  not 
both  fear  and  respect  him,  and,  above  all, 
repose  entire  confidence  in  his  justice  and 
impartiality.  He  had  been  a  court  of  appeal 
in  all  their  quarrels,  and  composed  their 
differences  with  firmness  and  fairness.  His 
responsibilities  ever  since  1899,  when  he  first 
went  to  Muscat  to  establish  a  better  under- 
standing with  the  ruler  of  Oman,  were  heavy 
and  varied.  Often  he  was  in  most  critical 
situations,  for  Germany  was  not  the  only 
Power  which  during  that  period  sought  to 
practise  an  aggressive  policy  in  the  Gulf.  He 
emerged  from  every  trial  successfully,  and 
overcame  difficulties  which  in  the  hands  of  a 
weaker  or  less  prudent  man  might  have  caused 
an  international  explosion.  Patience,  tact, 
vigilance,  and  an  infinite  capacity  for  laborious 
work  were  the  secrets  of  his  years  of  toil. 
Silent  and  modest,  fearless  in  emergency,  never 
afraid  of  responsibility  but  endowed  with 
unfailing  restraint  and  caution,  he  was  a 
striking  figure  in  the  long  line  of  India's  soldier- 
politicals,  and  served  Great  Britain  in  the  Gulf 
and  Southern  Persia  better  than  she  knew. 

After  a  consultation  with  Sir  Percy  Cox,  on 
November  14,  General  Barrett  decided  to 
postpone  the  disembarcation  of  his  forces  until 
next  day.  The  camp  of  the  Poona  Brigade  was 
wet  and  muddy,  having  suffered  two  days' 
heavy  rain.  On  th(>  15th  the  troops  began  to  go 
ashore,  but   were  not  all  landed   mitil  2  p.m. 


112 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


TURKISH    OFFICERS    AT    KURNA. 

In  the  meantime,  General  Barrett,  on  hearing 
that  the  enemy  were  occupying  a  post  about 
four  miles  northward  at  the  village  of  Sahain, 
ordered  General  Delamain  to  move  out  against 
them  with  the  Poona  Brigade.  General  Dela- 
main marched  after  breakfast,  taldng  with  liim 
his  two  mountain  batteries,  the  Dorsets, 
117th  Mahrattas,  and  the  104th  Wellesley's 
Rifles.  The  20th  Pimjabis  followed  later  in 
reserve.  The  Tiu"ks  were  found  to  be  about 
2,000  strong,  about  one-third  of  their  force 
being  Arab  auxiliaries.  They  were  holding  a 
position  on  the  outer  edge  of  the  date  planta- 
tions, which  extend  back  from  the  river  at  this 
point  for  about  two  miles,  beyond  which'  the 
country  is  open  desert. 

The  Dorsets  advanced  against  the  Turkish 
right,  half  the  104th  attacked  their  centre,  and 
the  rest  of  the  104th,  with  the  117th,  moved 
against  the  enemy's  left  through  the  date 
groves,  which  were  full  of  riflemen.  The  Espiegle 
and  the  Odin  joined  in  the  action  from  the  river. 
The  Turks  did  not  hold  their  fire,  but  opened 
with  rifles  on  the  Dorsets  at  1,000  yards,  while 
the  latter  were  skirmishing  across  the  plain  in 
open  order.  The  enemy's  gims  fired  shrapnel, 
though  not  with  any  marked  success,  although 
their  general  resistance  was  quite  stubborn 
enough.  The  117th,  who  were  eventually 
reinforced  by  the  20th,  reached  the  village  of 
Sahain,  but  did  not  succeed  in  entirely  clearing 


it,  though  it  was  set  on  fire.  Along  the  rest  of 
the  front  the  Turks  fell  back,  but  as  the  action 
was  only  meant  to  be  a  reconnaissance  in  force 
the  brigade  then  marched  back  to  camp.  The 
British  casualties  were  two  officers  wounded  ; 
rank  and  file,  eight  killed  and  51  wounded.  Of 
these  the  Dorsets  lost  five  killed  and  35  wounded. 

November  16  was  a  day  of  rest,  but  news 
came  down  the  river  which  appeared  to  make 
an  early  movement  imperative.  The  bulk  of 
the  Basra  garrison  was  advancing,  and  tiiere 
were  fears  about  the  fate  of  the  Eui'opeans 
detained  in  the  city.  On  November  17  the 
whole  force  started  northward  at  5.30  a.m., 
and  the  action  was  fought  which  decided  the 
fate  of  Basra  and  the  delta.  The  position  at 
Sahain,  which  had  been  attacked  on  the  loth, 
was  found  to  be  completely  evacuated.  After 
a  march  of  about  nine  miles  contact  was 
established  with  the  Turks  at  SaJiil,  near  the 
river.  They  were  in  a  strongly  entrenched 
position,  and  had  with  them  twelve  guns, 
chiefly  Krupps.  Two  of  their  guns  were  near 
the  trenches,  but  the  rest  were  in  a  date-groxe 
about  2,000  yards  in  the  rear. 

General  Fry  and  a  portion  of  the  Belgaum 
Brigade  led  the  advance,  much  of  wliich  had 
to  be  made  over  the  open  plain.  The  ground 
was  heavy,  and  just  as  the  action  began  a 
heavy  rain  and  hail  storm,  lasting  half  an  hoiu-, 
turned  it  into  a  quagmire.  The  Turks  opened 
fire  between  9  and  10  a.m.  with  shrapnel.  It 
was  noticed  that  the  shrapnel  burst  far  too 
high,  and  when  common  shell  was  used  much 
of  it  failed  to  burst  at  all.  The  British  batteries 
covered  the  advance,  the  mountain  guns 
paying  attention  to  the  Turkish  trenches,  whfle 
the  field  guns  were  turned  on  the  Turkish  bat- 
tery in  the  date  grove.  The  two  gunboats 
had  moved  up  the  river  and  enfiladed  the 
Turkish  left  flank.  The  Turkish  rifle  fire,  which 
presently  began,  was  on  the  whole  also  bad. 

An  onlooker  afterwards  wrote  :  "  The  coim- 
try  over  which  our  infantry  advanced  was 
flat  as  a  table,  and  would  not  have  given  cover 
to  a  mouse,  much  less  a  man.  It  was  just  grand 
to  watch  them  move  forward.  It  might  have 
been  a  field  day."  It  was  during  this  advance 
in  open  order,  without  a  chance  of  cover,  that 
most  of  the  British  casualties  occurred.  It 
was  like  moving  through  a  snipe  marsh,  and 
it  took  hours  to  get  near  the  almost  invisible 
Turldsh  trenches.  The  guns  stuck,  and  men 
tugged  at  their  wheels. 

The  Turks  at  length  were  pouring  in  a  heavier 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


113 


and  more  accurate  fire.  They  had  some  sharp- 
shooters in  their  trenches,  who  began  to  do  a 
good  deal  of  execution.  The  attacking  infantry, 
both  British  and  Indian,  advanced  steadily  and 
indomitably,  and  were  quite  unperturbed. 
General  Barrett  afterwards  telegraphed  to 
the  Secretary  of  State  for  India  that  "  the 
troops  behaved  splendidly."  The  gallant  Dor- 
sets,  who  learned  at  Dargai,  on  the  Indian 
frontier,  what  it  means  to  face  heavy  fire  with- 
out cover,  were  the  principal  sufferers.  An 
officer  in  an  Indian  regiment,  who  took  part  in 
the  action,  wrote  :  "  The  Dorse ts  were  simply 
wonderful."  Nearer  and  nearer  drew  the 
British  skirmishers.  The  Turkish  trenches 
were  being  heavily  bombarded.  All  the  guns 
from  the  batteries  and  the  ships  were  now 
concentrated  on  them,  as  well  as  a  heavy  rifle 
fire.  A  British  battery  got  round  on  their 
right.  The  British  infantry  were  within  four 
hundred  yards.  They  were  ready  with  their 
bayonets,  but  the  Turks  would  not  face  the  cold 
steel.  Just  as  our  troops  expected  to  charge, 
the  enemy  broke  from  their  trenches  and  fled. 
The  fight  was  won,  and  though  none  present 
then  realiiied  it,  at  that  moment  Basra  was  won 
too.  From  the  time  the  Turks  broke  at  Sahil 
they  never  really  stood  fast  again. 

When  the  enemy  fled  they  ran  at  first,  but 
Boon  slackened  into  a  walk,  for  it  was  impossible 


to  run  far  over  such  heavy  ground.  The  British 
troops  rose  and  poured  a  withering  fire  into  them, 
while  the  batteries  sprayed  them  with  shrapnel. 
Effective  pursuit  was  out  of  the  question, 
though  the  enemy  were  followed  for  about  a 
mile.  The  33rd  Cavalry  were  eager,  but  horse- 
men cannot  charge  through  a  sticky  swamp. 
Presently  even  the  British  batteries  ceased 
firing,  for  the  oddest  but  most  imperative  of 
reasons.  The  fugitive  Turks  had  passed  from 
their  view,  and  were  lost  in  a  mirage.  To  the 
gumiers  it  seemed  as  though  there  were  trees 
and  shining  water  where  shortly  before  there 
had  been  nothing  but  the  bare  plain  and  the 
scattered  and  retreating  enemy.  Every  traveller 
in  these  regions  knows  how  curiously  deceptive 
the  mirages  are,  and  how  they  often  obliterate 
the  real  view.  The  curious  thing  was  that 
the  watchers  perched  high  on  the  distant 
transports  saw  no  mirage  at  all,  and  wondered 
why  the  guns  had  stopped  firing  on  the  routed 
enemy,  who  were  quite  visible  from  the  ships. 
This  also  is  a  common  and  quite  understand- 
able experience. 

The  action  at  Sahil  was  over  by  4  p.m. 
The  British  losses  were  :  killed,  officers,  three  ; 
rank  and  file,  about  35 ;  wounded,  officers, 
about  15  ;  rank  and  file,  about  300.  General 
Barrett  had  a  narrow  escape,  a  shrapnel  shell 
burying  itself  in  the  ground  at  liis  feet,  at   a 


MATERIAL    FOR    HACJHUAD    RAILWAY    AT    MAGIL.    NRAR    HASKA. 
The  Germans  brought  these  rails,   etc.,  for  the   Baghdad-Basra  scciiou. 


114 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


range  of  about  3,500  yards.  The  casualties 
among  the  Dorsets  were  about  130.  Three 
Dorset  officers  were  killed,  including  Major 
Mercer,  who  was  present  at  the  storming  of 
Dargai,  on  the  Indian  frontier,  and  Captain 
Frank  Middleton,  who  saw  much  service  in 
South  Africa.  Most  of  the  losses  were  in 
General  Delamain's  Brigade,  but  General 
Fry's  Brigade  also  suffered  considerably.  The 
104th  Wellesley's  Rifles  reached  the  Turkish 
camp  and  got  about  80  tents  and  large  quanti- 
ties of  stores,  some  rifles,  20  camels  and  40 
mules.  Two  mountain  guns  were  captured. 
The  Turkish  losses  can  only  be  guessed,  but 
their  dead  numbered  hundreds,  and  the  Euro- 
peans at  Basra  afterwards  said  they  brought 
back  large  numbers  of  woimded,  estimated  at 
2,000,  though  the  figure  seems  excessive. 
About  150  prisoners  were  taken,  including  three 
officers. 

A  portion  of  the  expedition  camped  near  the 
battlefield,  and  the  rest  marched  back  to 
Saniyeh.  A  heavy  storm  that  evening  sank  a 
nmnber  of  boats  in  the  river.  Ten  men  were 
drowned,  and  a  considerable  quantity  of  stores 
and  kit  was  lost.  The  next  three  days  passed 
quietly,  for  the  men  needed  rest.  Some  amount 
of  reconnaissance  was  done,  and  the  force  was 
troubled  a  little  by  stray  Turkish  snipers. 

On  the  morning  of  November  21  came  the 


unexpected  news  that  the  Turks  had  evacuated 
Basra  in  a  panic,  and  that  Arabs  were  looting 
the  city.  General  Barrett  decided  to  push  on  at 
once.  He  had  at  his  disposal  two  river  paddle 
steamers  belonging  to  Messrs.  Lynch,  the 
Medjidieh  and  the  Blosse  Lynch.  He  embarked 
the  Norfolks,  with  General  Fry  and  the  staf?  of 
the  Belgaum  Brigade,  and  a  couple  of  mountain 
guns,  on  the  Medjidieh,  and  the  1 10th  Mahrattas 
on  the  other  vessel.  The  rest  of  the  expedition 
was  ordered  to  cross  the  desert  to  Basra, 
marching  all  night. 

The  Turlcs  had  made  an  awkward  obstruction 
in  the  river  at  Baliyahiyeh,  about  eight  miles 
beyond  Sahil.  They  had  sunk  the  Hamburg- 
Amerika  s.s.  Eckbatana,  5,000  tons  ;  the  John 
O'Scott,  Turkish-owned  ;  and  an  old  lightship 
from  Fao.  On  the  bank  at  this  point  they  had  a 
battery  of  Ivrupp  guns  in  position.  Like  all 
things  Turkish,  the  obstruction  was  imperfectly 
made.  The  Espiegle  and  the  Odin  managed  to 
get  past  it  and  disposed  of  the  battery.  The 
river  steamers  left  Saniyeh  at  9.30  p.m.,  and 
reached  the  obstruction  at  1  a.m.,  where  they 
were  met  by  the  Royal  Indian  Marine  paddle 
giuiboat  Lawrence.  They  waited  for  daylight, 
and  at  7  a.m.  passed  the  obstruction.  At  8.15 
they  were  met  by  a  boat  bearing  an  urgent 
message  from  the  American  Consul,  who  said 
that  the  Arabs  were  still  looting  and  that  lives 


TURKISH    PRISONERS    AT    KURNA. 
'Some  are  probably  Arab  irregulars. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


115 


RIFLES    TAKEN    AT    KURNA. 
On  the  left  is  one  of  Messrs.   Lynch's  river  st3arrers. 


were  imperiUed.  At  9  a.m.  they  came  in  sight 
of  Basra,  and  saw  black  clouds  of  smoke  rising 
from  the  Tiorkish  Custom  House,  which  had 
been  fired ;  but  the  Odin,  Espiegle,  and 
LawTence  had  already  arrived,  and  the  city  was 
saved.  A  quarter  of  an  hour  afterwards  the 
"German  flag  flying  over  the  imposing  German 
Consulate  was  lowered,  and  the  British  naval 
ensign  hoisted  in  its  stead. 

The  desert  column  reached  Basra  at  noon, 
and  camped  outside  the  city  that  day,  being 
somewhat  exhausted  after  a  forced  march  of 
30  miles.  The  Europeans  in  the  city  were 
all  safe,  having  been  detained  in  their  houses 
under  a  guard. 

The  city  and  port  of  Basra  have  been  famous 
in  the  East  for  centuries.  The  port  was  originally 
created  by  the  Caliph  Omar  in  638,  on  a  site 
some  miles  from  its  present  position.  In  the 
days  of  the  Baghdad  Caliphate  it  was  a  great 
emporiiun  of  trade  and  commerce,  and  from 
Basra  Sindbad  the  Sailor,  who  was  no  mythical 
personage,  sailed  on  his  memorable  and  highly 
coloiu-ed  voyages.  The  Turks  soon  brought 
about  the  decay  of  the  port  after  they  captured 
it  in  1668.  In  modern  times  its  prosperity  has 
greatly  revived,  largely  through  the  date  trade, 
of  which  it  is  the  central  mart.  Visitors  have 
often  said  that  the  European  community  of 
Basra  talk  dates  and  notliing  else.    The  export 


trade  of  Basra  reached  a  total  volume  of 
£3,246,000  in  1912,  of  which  barley  represented 
£1,118,000.  The  imports  in  the  same  year 
amounted  to  a  total  of  £2,653,000.  The  conquest 
of  a  city  with  a  total  annual  trade  of  six  million 
sterling  was  therefore  a  substantial  achieve- 
ment. 

Basra  has  been  called  the  Venice  of  the  East, 
but  the  title  is  far  too  flattering.  It  has  no  fine 
bmldings,  and  the  flat -roofed  houses  are 
unimpressive.  It  derives  such  beauty  as  it 
possesses  from  its  setting  of  palm-trees,  its 
gardens,  and  its  numerous  intersecting  canals  ; 
though  these  same  canals  are  a  constant  source 
of  fever.  The  main  portion  of  the  city,  a 
quarter  with  narrow,  unpaved  streets,  lies  up 
the  contracted  Asshar  creek,  two  miles  from 
the  river.  The  suburbs,  bowered  in  palms,  are 
more  attractive.  The  population  is  probably 
about  60,000,  but  there  are  many  more  people 
in  the  suburbs.  It  is  a  curiously  mixed  com- 
munitj%  including  many  Jews  and  Armeniarus. 
The  Turks  were  always  few  and  exclusive,  and 
consisted  mainly  of  Government  oflicials  and 
the  garrison.  The  Turk  had  long  been  overlord 
of  the  Euphrates  delta,  but  his  race  never  sought 
to  settle  there. 

The  Germans  were  perfectly  right  in  tlieir 
dreams  of  the  futiu'c  of  Basra,  and  had  tlieir 
purpose  not  been  primarily  political,  thoy  need 


116 


THE    TIMES    HISTOnY    OF    THE    WAR. 


PROCLAIMING    THE    BRITISH    OCCUPATION    AT    BASRA. 
Troops  lined  up  on  Asshar  Creek.      The  Union  Jack  was  hoisted  on  building  on  left. 


never  have  sought  to  emerge  upon  the  shores  of 
the  Giilf  at  all.     They  could  have  made  Basra 
an  Oriental  Hamburg,  as  they  often  declared. 
In  situation  it  closely  resembles  the  city  on  the 
Elbe.    The  bar  needs  dredging,  as  does  also  the 
channel    of    the    Shatt-al-Arab,    but    miles    of 
n:iagnificent  quays  might  be  constructed  on  both 
sides  of  the  river  frontage  of  Basra,  where  the 
river  is  half  a  mile  wide.      When  the  fertile 
valleys  of  the  Tigris  and  Euplu-ates  are  won 
back   to   cultivation  by  irrigation,   Basra  will 
have  a  great  and  prosperous  future.    The  work 
will  still  be  done,  though  not  by  German  hands. 
The  British  expedition  made  a  formal  entry 
into  the  city  on  November  23,  after  which  the 
troops     were     billeted,     some     occupying     the 
deserted    Tiukish    barracks    and    other    public 
buildings.     At  the  close  of  the  entry  half  the 
force  was  lined  up  on  the  Asshar  Canal  bank, 
facing  north,  and  the  notables  of  the  city  were 
assembled,   being  greeted  by   General  Barrett 
and  Sir  Percy  Cox.       A  proclamation  stating 
the   reasons   for   occupation   and   the   friendly 
intentions  of  the  British  Government  was  read 
aloud  in  Arabic.     The  Union  Jack  was  hoisted 
in  the  presence  of  guards  of  honour  furnished 
by  the  Royal  Navy  and  the  Norfolk  Regiment. 
The  troops  presented  arms,  three  cheers  were 
given  for  the  King-Emperor,  and  the  warships 


fired  a  salute  of  31  guns.  The  inliabitants 
took  the  change  very  calmly,  and  as  there  were 
no  Turks  left  among  them,  they  gave  a  cordial 
welcome  to  the  British.  Major  Brownlow  was 
appointed  ^Military  Governor,  and  took  up  his 
residence  at  the  German  Consulate.  The  Gerinan 
Consul  and  five  German  prisoners  were  removed 
to  Bombay.  The  expedition  started  a  little 
newspaper,  the  Basra  Times,  printed  in  English 
and  Arabic,  for  the  use  of  the  troops  and  the 
populace. 

At  the  beginning  of  December  a  camp  was 
formed  for  a  portion  of  the  force,  and  two 
mountain  batteries,  at  Magil,  about  four  miles 
farther  up  the  river.  Magil  was  a  depot  for 
material  for  the  Baghdad-Basra  Railway.  The 
troops  found  there  large  quantities  of  railway 
stores,  including  thousands  of  rails  and  sleepers. 
The  (Germans  had  made  a  wharf,  and  they  had 
landing-cranes  and  other  structiu-es.  The  staff 
had  fled,  and  the  two  spacious  and  comfortable 
houses  they  had  built  were  empty.  Near  Magil 
the  new  channel  of  the  Euphrates  enters  the 
Tigris,  and  thenceforward  to  the  sea  the  imited 
rivers  are  known  as  the  Shatt-al-Arab. 

Intelligence  was  received  at  this  time  that 
the  retreating  Turks  had  reassembled  at  Kurna, 
a  point  49  miles  above  Basra,  where  the  old 
and    now    partially    blocked    channel    of    the 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


117 


"Euphrates  joins  the  Tigris.  The  Arabs  profess 
to  beUeve  that  Kurna  is  the  site  of  the  Garden 
of  Eden,  though  Sir  WilUam  Willcocks  places 
it  far  above  Hitt  on  tlie  Euphrates,  and  con- 
siderably to  the  north-west  of  Baghdad.  Just 
at  Kurna  the  Tigris  is  about  300  yards  wide. 
Above  Kurna  it  narrows,  but  the  difficult  part . 
of  the  navigation  only  begins  30  miles  farther 
on,  and  contmues  for  about  80  miles.  The 
Tigi'is  winds  greatly  between  Kiu-na  and  Bagh- 
dad, and  is  said  to  cover  490  miles  between  the 
two  places.  The  land  route  across  the  desert 
irom  Kiuna  to  Baghdad  is  only  300  miles  in 
length.  The  Tigris  is  at  its  lowest  from  Septem- 
ber to  Xoveniber,  and  then  gradually  begiiis  to 
rise.  It  is  at  its  height  in  ]May  and  June.  Sea- 
going steamers  can  ascend  to  Kurna,  but  higher 
up  shallow-draught  vessels  are  required. 

On  December  2  it  was  decided  to  send  up  a 
■column  on  the  two  river  steamers  to  deal  with 
the  situation  at  Kurna.  It  embarked  next  day, 
and  sailed  at  8  p.m.  The  force  consisted  of  a 
■section  of  the  Royal  Field  Artillery,  a  half- 
company  of  the  3rd  Sappers  and  Miners,  the 
104th  Wellesley's  Rifles,  the  IlOth  Maln-attas, 
and  a  detachment  of  the  Norfolks,  with  an 
ambulance  party.  It  was  commanded  by 
Lieutenant-Colonel  Frazer,  of  the  110th  Mah- 
rattas.  The  river  steamers  each  had  a  couple  of 
18-pounder  field  guns  on  their  upper  dfecks,  and 
were  protected  by  parapets  of  gram  and  fodder 
bags  and  bales.  The  naval  flotilla  accompanying 
the  column  consisted  of  the  Espiegle,  Odin  and 
Lawrence,  the  armed  launches  ]\Iiner  (54  tons) 
and  Shaitan,  and  the  yacht  Lewis  Pelly  (100 
tons).  The  Lewis  Pelly  is  the  dispatch  boat  of 
the  British  Resident  at  Koweit,  and  on  this 
occasion  she  carried  two  3-pounders  and  a 
Maxitn,  Xot  much  opposition  was  expected, 
but  the  expectations  were  wrong. 

The  expedition  reached  a  point  about  four 
miles  below  Kurna  early  next  morning,  and  the 
troops  were  landed  on  the  left  (eastern)  bank. 
While  the  military  advanced,  the  Espiegle  and 
the  Lawrence  steamed  ahead,  with  the  armed 
launches.  The  Odin  was  left  behind  to  guard 
the  landing-place.  She  had  damaged  her  rudder, 
and  it  was  not  safe  to  take  her  roimd  the  sharp 
bend  of  the  river.  The  navigable  channel  was 
at  tliis  point  very  narrow,  and  the  ships  were 
constantly  touching  the  mud.  They  anchored 
at  a  suitable  spot,  and  engaged  the  Turkish 
guns  on  the  left  bank,  which  were  con- 
cealed in  date-groves  and  extremely  difficult 
to    locate.     They    also    shelled    Kurna.     The 


paddle-steamers  could  move  more  freely  owing 
to  their  shallow  draught,  so  they  went  closer 
inshore  and  used  their  guns  in  support.  The 
launches  were  even  more  daruig,  but  the  Miner 
was  holed  below  the  water-line  and  had  to 
withdraw.  The  Lawrence  was  also  hit  by  a ; 
shell. 

There  was  a  village  called  Me/era  some 
distance  from  the  bank,  on  the  left  of  the .; 
Turkish  position.  Colonel  Frazer  signalled  to , 
the  warshi2:)s  to  shell  it,  and  it  was  saluted  with 
lyddite  and  destroyed  in  half  an  hoiu-.  "  1 
have  never  seen  such  a  bonfire,"  wrote  one  of 
the  naval  officers  who  was  aloft  "spotting." 
The  troops  meanwhile  advanced  across  the 
plahi,  and  cleared  the  village  and  the  Tiu-lcish 
trenches.  The  survivors  of  the  enemy  crossed 
the  river  to  Kurna  in  boats.  The  colurrui  was 
then  opposite  the  town  of  Kurna,  which  lies 
amid  thick  trees  at  the  point  where  the  old 
channel  of  the  Euphrates  meets  the  Tigris.  It 
was  evident  that  Kiu-na  was  far  more  strongly 
held  than  was  supposed.  It  was  entrenched,  and 
the  houses,  few  of  which  could  be  seen,  were 
loopholed.  A  t'^emendous  fusillade  came 
whistling  across  the  stream.  There  was  no 
means  of  crossing,  and  there  was  nothing  for  it 
but  a  withdrawal  to  the  original  landing-place. 
The  camp  was  then  entrenched,  because  the 
Tiu'ks  were  in  superior  numbers,  and  an  attack 
wEis  feared.  They  did  not  attack,  but  it  was 
afterwards  found  that  during  that  night  they 
wert;  strongly  reinforced.  Colonel  Frazer's 
colmnn  was  not  strong  enough  for  the  task. 
Nevertheless,  it  captured  two  of  the  Tiu-kish 
guns,  which  had  been  silenced  by  the  ships. 
One  was  brought  in,  but  the  other  had  to  be  left. 


if~ii  «|C  iTurUiGh 
Our  present   Jri  S  %-\Position 


,.,,./"  on  S'><  by  means  of  3  dhon 


Open  desert  plain: 
^ith  palm  treu 
on  either  bank 


<0^^^     pl-.BankUie^grjj 

'i        '•aa?T\       *    1        -  ^     ^  Village  burnt  0/  US 

a^    a.  "'_^".        ^^  rcoccupied^by   Turks 

■i*--       i^^^^^^^^^"^        rat ^Ij on  At*   .'/C 


''eoccupiea^by 
•etahen  by  js 


,<#> 


British  Attack 
^^ct?  on?''' 

onlyoccucieKpos"  X-Y 

sn /Knijg/e  ii"-iyer  aasntino 
'd  Ifjardn^ent  ^ 


Launcti  Shaitan 
struck  by  ihells 
ana  Oeached  here 


Approximate  Scale 


1  MIUE 


'3  " 

-S^KPrrtisnCafTipi 


FLAN    OF    ACTIONS    AT    KURNA. 
From  a  Sketch  Map  by  a   British  Officer. 


118 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


WOUiNDED    INDIAN    SOLDIERS. 

and  an  attempt  to  obtain  it  next  day  failed 
owing  to  the  heavy  fire. 

A  hasty  message  was  sent  down  to  Basra  for 
reinforcements,  and  meanwhile  casualties  were 
examined.  The  Miner  had  a  shell  in  her  engine- 
room,  and  had  settled  on  the  mud,  biit  was 
patched  up  and  floated  the  same  night.  The 
Lawrence  had  received  a  shell  below,  and  her 
dynamo  was  wrecked.  The  launches  were  struck 
several  times.  The  casualties  among  the  troops 
were  one  British  officer  and  three  British  rank 
and  file  wovmded,  one  Indian  officer  and  19  rank 
and  file  killed  and  about  sixty  woiuided. 

On  December  5  (a  Satiu-day)  little  happened, 
and  on  the  6th  Brigadier- General  Fry  arrived 
from  Basra  with  considerable  reinforcements, 
including  the  7th  Rajputs,  the  remainder  of  the 
Norfolks,  a  field  battery,  and  a  mountain 
battery.  By  this  time  the  Turks  had  crossed 
the  river  again  and  reoccupied  Mezera.  They 
made  a  half-hearted  attempt  to  advance  against 
the  camp,  but  were  dispersed  by  a  few  roimds 
of  shrapnel. 

Kuma  was  not  yet  taken,  and  it  took  some 
stiff  fighting  to  capture  it.  On  the  morning  of 
the  7th  the  action  of  the  5th  was  fought  all 
over  again,  exactly  in  the  same  way,  though 
this  time  the  British  were  in  greater  strength, 
while  the  Turlcs  were  somewhat  handicapped 
by  tlie  loss  of  the  two  guns  silenced  in  the 
previous  engagements.   Exactly  the  same  result 


followed.  Mezera  was  taken  once  more,  the- 
Turkish  trenches  were  cleared,  and  the  survivors 
fled  across  the  river  ;  but  a  terrific  fire  across 
the  stream  from  the  loopholed  hou.ses  of  Kurna 
stopped  any  further  operations  for  the  day. 
On  this  occasion  a  portion  of  the  Briti.sh  forces 
bivouacked  near  Mezera  and  held  the  left  bank 
opposite  Kurna.  Three  guns  were  taken  on 
this  day,  as  well  as  100  prisoners,  including 
three  officers.  During  the  night  the  Turks 
fired  a  few  shells,  but  otherwise  remained 
i.iactive. 

The  flotilla,  which  was  again  busily  engaged 
during  the  action  of  the  7th,  had  plenty  of 
excitement.  '  The  Espiegle  was  hit  several 
time.=:.  The  Miner  went  aground,  but  got  of? 
again.  The  Lewis  Pelly  had  her  share  of  damage. 
The  launch  Shaitan  was  struck  on  the  bridge  by 
a  shell,  which  killed  her  commander  Lieutenant- 
Commander  J.  G.  M.  Elkes,  R.N.R.  The  man 
at  the  wheel  was  wounded,  and  part  of  the 
wheel  was  carried  away.  A  later  shot  smashed 
the  Shaitan's  rudder,  and  she  had  to  retire. 
The  Odin  joined  in  this  day's  action. 

It  was  clear  that  the  only  way  to  take  Kiu-na 
was  to  cross  the  River  Tigris  higher  up.  Early 
on  the  morning  of  the  8th,  two  battalions,  the 
104th  and  110th,  were  marched  a  long  way  up 
the  river  with  two  mountain  guns.  Some 
sappers  then  swam  the  swift  stream,  a  feat  in 
itself.  They  carried  a  line  across,  to  which  a 
steel  hawser  was  attached.  With  the  aid  of  a 
commandeered  dhow  a  flying  bridge  was  con- 
structed, and  the  two  battalions,  with  the  guns, 
were  ferried  across  without  opposition.  They 
then  inarched  baf;k  down  the  right  (western) 
bank,  tlireatened  the  Turkish  position  in  flank 
and  rear,  and  seized  the  approaches  to  Kurna. 
No  attempt  was  made  to  carry  the  town  that 
night,  but  the  little  force  entrenched  itself  in 
the  palm  groves  near  the  town. 

About  midnight  on  the  8th  the  watchers  on 
the  warships  below  Kurna  saw  a  small  steamer 
coming  do\vn  ablaze  with  lights.  She  carried 
three  Turkish  officers  bearing  a  message  from 
Subhi  Bey,  the  late  Governor  of  Basra,  then 
commanding  the  forces  at  Kurna.  He  offered  to 
surrender  the  town,  but  wanted  his  troops  to 
march  out  with  their  arms.  General  Fry  insisted 
on  an  unconditional  surrender,  and  after  an 
hour's  parley  in  the  small  hours  on  board  the 
Espiegle  this  was  agreed  to. 

At  1  p.m.  on  the  9th  the  remnants  of  the 
Tiu-kish  garrison  appeared  in  front  of  their 
trenches  on  the  river  bank  and  laid  down  their- 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


119 


arms.  A  large  proportion  must  have  fled  during 
the  night  into  the  surrounding  country,  and  it 
was  known  that  many  barge-loads  went 
upstream  to  Baghdad.  The  two  Indian  bat- 
talions on  the  Kurna  side  formed  up  round  the 
garrison.  General  Fry,  Sir  Percy  Cox,  and  the 
senior  naval  officer,  then  went  on  shore  with 
their  staffs.  The  Turkish  officers  came  up  and 
handed  over  their  swords.  General  Fry  returned 
Subhi  Bey's  sword  in  recogm'tion  of  his  gallant 
defence.  The  compliment  was  deserved,  for,  as 
subalterns  would  say,  the  Turks  "  put  up  a  good 
show  "  in  their  last  resistance.  The  captives 
numbered  42  officers  and  1,021  men.  Several 
more  guns  wer>?  taken.  The  Tiu-kish  casualties 
in  and  around  Kurna  and  Mezera  are  believed 
to  have  been  at  least  a  thousand,  and  were 
perhaps  more.  An  officer  wrote  that  he  had 
charge  of  a  party  which  litiried  200  dead  found 
in  one  trench  alone.  Kurna  was  wrecked  by  the 
British  fire.  The  prisoners  were  taken  to  India. 
The  British  casualties  on  the  7th  and  8th 
nimibered  one  British  officer  killed  and  three 
wounded,  and  40  Indian  rank  and  file  killed 
and  120  wounded.  The  operations  at  Kurna 
gave  the  British  complete  control  of  the  deltaic 
region,  but  it  was  considered  necessary  to  leave 
a  strong  column  at  Kurna,  and  another  across 
the  river  at  Ivlezera.  They  made  big  entrenched 
camps  and  prepared  to  settle  down.    The  neigh- 


bourhood was  on  the  whole  not  inviting.  The 
camps  were  pitched  beyond  the  date  groves, 
and  one  officer  wrote  :  "  This  is  a  most  desolate 
spot.  Sitting  here,  all  I  can  see  is  miles  and  miles 
of  perfectly  level  desert,  absolutely  unbroken." 
Many  Canadian  prairie  farmers  might  have  said 
the  same  thing  in  the  early  days.  The  country  is 
not  desert,  but  one  of  the  most  fertile  regions 
in  the  world.  The  British  troops  liked  the  life 
as  a  welcome  change  from  India,  but  the 
mosquitoes  troubled  them  greatly.  One  verj'- 
still  night,  when  the  camp  was  asleep,  a  man 
was  heard  to  say  to  his  neighbour  :  "  'Ere,  Bill, 
if  this  is  the  Garden  of  Eden,  I  wonder  what 
Adam  and  Eve  did  with  these  'ere  mosquitoes 
a-buzzin'  around  them." 

In  January  a  force  of  about  5,000  Turks,  with 
six  guns,  estabhshed  itself  on  the  Ratta  Canal, 
about  seven  miles  north  of  the  Mezera  Cam[j. 
The  British  troops,  aided  by  the  three  gunboats, 
made  a  reconnaissance  in  force  from  Mezera  on 
January  20.  The  enemy's  outposts  were  driven 
across  the  canal,  and  his  camps  and  dhows  were 
shelled.    The  British  had  about  50  casualties. 

His  Excellency  Lord  Hardinge  of  Penshurst, 
Viceroy  and  Governor -General  of  India,  imder 
whose  direction  and  supervision  the  invasion  of 
Chaldea  was  begun,  made  a  toiu?  of  the  Persian 
Gulf  and  the  conquered  territory  at  the  end 
of    January.     Lord   Hardinge   visited   Muscat, 


GUN    CAPTURED    AT    KURNA. 
The  Officer  seated  on  the  Gun  is  Brigadier-General  C.  I.  I'ly. 


120 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


Balirein.     Koweit,     Mohammerah,     and     other 

plac(!.s,    and    eventually    arrived    at    Basra    on 

February  4.     He  was  received  by  the  native 

community    with   an   address    of   welcome,    in 

which  the  hope  was  expressed  that  the  British 

occupation  would  be  permanent.     He  said,  in 

reply  : 

The  British  occupation  has  raised  problems  which 
require  prompt  consideration  and  settlement.  I  have 
coiue  heie  to  see  local  conditions  for  myself  in  order  tb.e 
better  to  judge  what  measures  are  necessary.  Yon  are 
aware  that  we  are  not  engaged  single-handed  in  this 
groat  struggle,  and  we  cannot  lay  down  plans  for  the 
future  without  a  full  exchange  of  views  with  the  other 
Groat  Towers.  b\it  I  can  liold  out  the  assurance  that  tlie 
future  will  bring  you  a  more  benign  rule. 

Lord  Hardinge  afterwards  went  up  the  river 
to  Kurna  and  Mezera,  so  that  he  visited  the 
most  advanced  outposts  of  the  expedition.  He 
also,  while  at  Basra,  rode  across  the  desert  to 
Shaiba  and  elsewhere. 

Attacks  on  Muscat  on  January  10  and  11, 
which  were  repulsed  by  detachments  of  the 
95th  Russell's  Infantry  and  the  102nd  Bombay 
Grenadiers,  had  only  a  remote  connexion  \\  ith 
the  great  war.      They  were  the  outcome  of  a 


local  revolt  against  the  Sultan  of  Oman  which 
had  begun  nearly  two  years  before,  and  was 
perhaps  stimulated  into  renewed  activity  by 
the  news  that  half  the  world  was  in  arms.  The 
town  and  district  were  perfectly  quiet  when 
Lord  Hardinge  arrived  some  time  later.  Cajjtain 
William  Henry  Shakespear,  CLE.,  British 
Resident  at  Koweit,  was  killed  in  Central 
Arabia  during  February  while  on  a  special 
mission  to  Ibn  Saud,  who  was  at  strife  with 
soinc  of  liis  neighbours.  Captain  Shakespear 
was  a  fine  type  of  the  young  soldier-political, 
and  his  death  was  a  great  loss. 

There  was  much  relief  at  the  end  of  February 
when  the  Europeans  who  had  been  at  Baghdad, 
about  fifty  in  number,  reached  the  shores  of 
the  Mediterranean.  They  were  unexpectedly 
released  from  detention  by  order  of  Djemal 
Pasha,  who  was  formerly  Vali  of  Baghdad,  and 
perhaps  did  not  forget  old  friendships.  Nine 
Englishwomen  and  some  children  were  left  in 
Baghdad  in  charge  of  Dr.  Johnson,  an  elderly 
missionary.  They  were  not  allowed  to  depart,. 
but  it  w  as  believed  that  they  were  quite  safe. 


THE 
BUSRA     TIMES 


ao  ;:a.     ly^h  January,  lylb. 
REUTERS 

J&noiry  12Ul  O«nnao  offensive  ia  Poland  la  eon* 
ceotrated  oo  narrow  xone  10  tnilM  wide,  30  uulea  west 
of  WAfiSAW.  2  Anny  Corps  zn  operstinf  wtth  heavy 
gons.  aad  the  Oenoaa  Uce  practically  foUows  the  Hue 
al  tae  S^AV/Kh.  The  Ocrinana  arc  s'ralnine  every  nerve 
to  possess  the  BOUNOFF  WOODS.  Pnsocers  state  that 
the  enemy  are  conlldent  of  thus  piercing  the  Russian 
hoe.  One  mght  13  coniecntiTe  a-tacis  were  repulsed,  the 
Bnssiana  inUiotiair  siiormoncIoiBes  ou  tb:  dense  lormauoo* 
0.  the  eceiny. 

Th»  Ainentan  papers  say  that-  the  Bntlih  reply  to 
their  Rote  was  co^t  cor.cilatorj  aad  fncodly 

The  Gcnpaas  are  fonoUsly  bomhardmg  S0ISSOH& 
Snd  UlA  QahtiAa  ^  KAvaze 


'y'H,  i_-  j^;>  *-*■  ,-^f  J^ 


i -It  *.*  jj  oAt»  ^'Jy-'^  '^y^^ 


Portion  of  Title-Page  of  Newspaper  Started  by  Expecition  after  the  I  all  of  Basra. 


CHAPTER    LIII. 


THE  SECOND  THREE  MONTHS  OF 

NAVAL  WAR. 


Lord  Fisher  at  the  Admiralty — Tsing-Tau  and  the  Japanese  Navy — The  German  Losses — 
Career  and  End  of  the  Emden — The  Cocos-Keeling  Action — Action  Off  the  Coast  of  Chile 
— Loss  of  Good  Hope  and  Monmouth— Victory  Off  the  F.\lkland  Islands — End  of  von 
Spee's  Squadron — Admiral  Sturdee's  Dispatch — Minor  Operations — East  Africa — Konigs- 
berg  in  Rufigi  River — West  Africa — Red  Sea — Persian  Gulf — The  Goeben  in  the  Black 
Sea — Torpedoing  of  Messudiyeh  by  B  11  in  the  Dardanelles — British  Losses  in  Home 
Waters — Bulwark  and  Formidable — Raids  and  Countkr-raids — Yarmouth,  Scarborough 
and  Cuxhaven — Admiral  Beatty's  Action  in  the  North  Sea — Sinking  of  the  Blucher. 


ON  October  29,  1914,  Prince  Louis  of 
Battenberg  was  succeeded  in  the 
otHce  of  First  Sea  Lord  by  Admiral  of 
the  Fleet  Lord  Fisher  of  Kilverstone. 
Of  the  reasons  which  caused  the  resignation  of 
Prince  Louis  there  is  no  occasion  to  write  ;  but 
that  fine  seaman  and  most  able  tactician 
carried  with  him  in  his  retirement  the  good 
wishes  and  the  admiration  of  the  whole  service, 
of  which  he  had  so  long  been  an  ornament. 
Lord  Fisher  was  now  called  upon  by  his  coiuitry 
to  wield  the  weapons  that  he  had  had  so  large 
a  share  in  bringing  into  being. 

During  the  second  three  months  of  the  war 
events  of  great  importance  happened  in  the 
North  Sea,  but  the  main  feature  of  this  period 
was  the  practical  completion  of  the  task  of 
destroying  Germany's  naval  forces  in  the  outer 
seas.  To  the  taking  of  Tsing-Tau  had  to  be 
added  the  destruction  of  the  naval  force  which 
had  been  based  upon  that  Eastern  stronghold. 
Its  ultimate  fate  was  sure,  but  its  existence 
constituted  a  menace  to  commerce  and  in- 
volved risks  and  responsibiUties  which  directly 
and  indirectly  affected  the  whole  work  of  the 
British  Navy.  Tsing-Tau  was  from  the  begin- 
ning  of  German  occupation  administered  by 
the  Gei-man  Admiralty,  not  by  the  Colonial 
Office,  and  the  cost  was  a  charge  upon  the 
Navy,  not  the  Colonial,  Estimates.  It  was,  in 
fact,  above  all  a  naval  base,  and  the  home  of 
the  German  "  East  Asiatic  "  squadron.  This 
Vol.  III.— Part  30. 


force  consisted  of  the  armoured  cruisers  Scham- 
horst  and  Gneisenau,  the  light  cruisers  Emden, 
Niimberg  and  Leipzig,  four  gim.boats  and  two 
destroyers.  As  will  be  seen,  the  cruisers  did 
not  remain. to  be  destroyed  at  Tsing-Tau,  and 
their  careers  and  fates  are  the  central  featiu-es 
of  the  ensuing  narrative. 

The  full  story  of  the  fate  of  Tsing-Tau  has 
been  told  in  Chapter  XLIV.  We  must  now 
describe  briefly  the  work  of  the  J  apanese  Navj-, 
which  assisted  the  fleets  of  the  Allies  so  materially 
by  clearing  the  waters  in  the  vicinity  of  its 
own  shores,  and  which  afterwards  cooperated 
in  the  convoy  of  troops  from  the  Dominions  and 
in  hauling  dowTi  the  German  flag  in  the  islands 
of  the  Pacific. 

It  was  not  until  August  23,  1914,  that  Japan 
broke  off  diplomatic  relations  with  Germany  and 
declared  war  ;  but  as  soon  as  this  happened 
our  Far-Eastern  Allies  acted  with  the  prompti- 
tude and  startling  efficiency  tliat  we  have 
learned  to  expect  from  them  when  warlike 
operations  have  to  be  undertaken.  The  First 
Fleet,  under  the  command  of  Admiral  Baron 
Dewa,  strung  itself  out  on  a  line  from  the 
Shantung  Promontorj'  in  the  Yellow  Sea  to  the 
Chusan  Archipelago  in  the  Eastern  Sea  ;  while 
the  Second  Fleet,  under  the  command  of 
Admiral  Kato,  had  bj'  August  27  spread  itself 
in  front  of  the  Bay  of  Kiao-Chau — in  which 
Tsing-Tau  is  situated — and  had  establLshed  tis 
close  a  blockade  of  that  port  as  modern  con- 


121 


122 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


ditions  of  sea  warfare  permit.  The  objective 
of  the  Japanese  was,  naturally,  the  German 
Far-Eastern  Squadron,  but  von  Spee,  the 
Admiral  in  command  of  this  force,  succeeded  in 
hiding  himself  and  his  cruisers  somewhere  in 
the  south  of  the  Cliina  Sea. 

The  Japanese  Fleets  remained  on  their 
stations  as  described  imtil  the  end  of  August, 
when  the  transportation  of  the  army  destined 
for  the  captiu-e  of  Tsing-Tau  began.  The 
First  Fleet  took  up  a  position  in  Southern 
Korean  waters,  while  a  squadron  of  the  Second 
Fleet,  cruising  in  the  Yellow  Sea,  rendered 
assistance  to  the  men-of-war  convoying  the 
transports.  Rear-Adnural  Kamimura's  Squad- 
ron, cooperating  with  the  detachment  from 
the  Port  Arthur  naval  station,  assisted  in  the 
landing  of  troops  at  Lunldang.  While  these 
movements  were  in  progress — they  lasted  till 
September  1 3 — a  detachment  under  the  direct 
command  of  Admiral  Kato,  Commander-in- 
Chief  of  the  Second  Squadron,  with  the  Tochinai 
and  Okada  detachments  and  a  ftu-ther  con- 
tingent specially  commissioned  for  this  service, 
concentrated  on  Kiao-Chau  Bay  and  the 
immediate  vicinity.     In  spite  of  extremely  bad 


i:rSuez. 


weather,  gale  succeeding  to  gale,  the  mine 
sweepers  worked  almost  imintermittently  to 
clear  the  sea  in  front  of  the  point  where  the 
second  detachment  of  the  army  was  to  be 
landed.  Scouting  was  also  kept  up  by  means 
of  aircraft,  and  eventually  the  enemy  was  cut 
off  from  all  communication  by  way  of  the  sea. 
When,  in  September,  the  transportation  of 
the  second  portion  of  the  army  was  begun,  the 
First  Fleet  was  employed  again  in  convoying 
the  transports ;  the  Kamimm-a  and  Port 
Arthur  detachments  assisted  in  the  landing  of 
troops  at  Laoshan  Bay,  wliile  the  main  force  of 
the  Second  Fleet,  which  was  now  able  to  operate 
inshore  owing  to  the  success  of  the  mine  sweep- 
ing, cooperated  with  the  land  forces  in  bom- 
barding the  fortresses  on  the  right  wing  of  the 
line  of  the  enemy.  In  this  operation  the 
Kamimura  and  Port  Arthur  detachments 
assisted.  The  Marine  Batteries  which  were 
working  with  the  besieging  army  opened  fire  on 
October  14  upon  the  eneray  warships  in  the 
harbour,  and  having  rendered  them  useless, 
turned  their  attention  to  the  bombardment  of 
Tsing-Tau  fort.  On  October  31  a  general 
cannonade  was  begun,  and  on  November  7  the 


THE    INDIAN    OCEAN. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


123 


LANDING    PARTY    ABOUT    TO    RETURN    TO    THE    "EMDEN"    AFTER     DESTROYING 
THE    WIRELESS    STATION    AT    COGOS-KEELING    ISLANDS. 


fortress  surrendered.  The  British  battleship 
Triumph  and  the  destroyer  Osk  cooperated 
with  the  Second  Fleet  and  took  part  in  the 
blockade  as  well  as  in  the  bombardment. 

During  these  operations  there  were  lost  the 
old  light  cruiser  Takachico,  3,700  tons,  date 
1885,  the  destroyer  Shiratai,  torpedo  boat 
No.  33,  and  three  specially  commissioned 
steamers.  On  the  enemy's  side  there  were 
either  svink  or  destroyed,  the  Austrian  cruiser 
Kaiserin  Elizabeth,  five  gunboats  (the  Cormo- 
ran,  litis,  Jaguar,  Tiger  and  Luchs),  and  two 
destroyers. 

This  satisfactory  action  was  only  a  part  of 
the  activaty  displayed  by  the  Japanese.  On 
the  outbreak  of  hostilities  Japan's  Third  Fleet 
was  sent  to  protect  the  trade  route  from  the 
Southern  Seas,  through  Chinese  waters,  until 
one  of  its  units  came  into  touch  with  the 
guardship  at  the  Makoh  Naval  Station  in 
Korea.  Although  by  the  beginning  of  Novem- 
ber all  enemy  ships  had  been  cleared  out  of  Far- 
Eastern  waters,  as  far  as  was  known,  still  this 
surveillance  was  kept  up.  A  detachment  of 
this  squadron  detailed  for  operations  in  the 
Southern  Seas  proceeded  to  Singapore  on 
August  26  and  carried  on  operations  in  concert 
with  the  British  Eastern  Squadron.  At  first 
nothing  was  known  of  the  movements  of  the 
enemy  in  these  regions,  and  the  work  consisted 
of  general  sxu-veillance  and  supervision  of 
important   ports.     When    the   Emden   became 


active  in  the  eastern  portion  of  the  Indian 
Ocean  the  detachment  assisted  in  the  hunt  for 
that  elusive  cruiser,  and  on  October  25  a 
reinforcement  under  Vice-Admiral  Tochinai 
was  dispatched  to  the  scene,  and  on  Novem- 
ber 9  the  Emden  was  destroyed  at  the  Cocos- 
Keeling  Islands  by  H.M.  Australian  cruiser 
Sydney. 

When  hostilities  began  certain  ships  of  the 
enemy  were  at  large  in  the  Pacific  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Hawaii ;  but  it  was  not  known 
where  they  were,  nor  what  was  the  position  of 
the  squadron  that  had  escaped  from  Far- 
Eastern  waters.  A  squadron  of  the  First  Fleet 
of  the  Imperial  Japanese  Navy  was  accordingly 
told  off  to  hunt  the  enemy  on  the  trade  route 
between  Japan  and  North  America.  No  trace 
of  German  ships  could  be  found,  so  the  squadron 
occupied  itself  usefully  by  taking  possession  of 
those  places  in  the  sun  which  Germ  an  j'^  had 
seized  in  the  Pacific  in  her  efforts  to  foi-m  a 
greater  Germany  beyond  the  sea. 

One  of  the  ships  of  the  German  Far-Eastern 
Squadron  that  escaped  the  attentions  of  the 
Japanese  in  these  waters  was  the  light  cruiser 
Emden.  Allusion  has  already  been  made  to 
her  in  a  previous  chapter,  but  it  remains  to 
tell  the  story  of  her  destruction.  The  resoiu"ce- 
fulness  of  the  captain  of  this  ship  has  often 
been  dwelt  upon,  but  it  was  probably  never 
displayed  to  greater  advantage  than  when  she 
left  Kiao-Chau.     There   was  every  chance  of 


124 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE     WAR. 


[Lalayclle. 

CAPTAIN    JOHN    C.   T.    GLOSSOP, 
of  H.M.S.   "Sydney." 

her  being  met  by  a  Japanese  vessel,  with  whom 
she  could  not  hope  to  come  to  action  with 
su(;cess.  The  expected  happened,  and  shortly 
after  leaving  the  anchorage  she  fell  in  .with  a 
Japanese  armoured  cruiser.  But  it  was  not 
the  three -funnelled  Emden  under  the  black, 
white  and  red  German  man-of-war  ensign  that 
passed  the  enemy  warship  ;  but  a  vessel  with 
four  funnels,  flying  the  British  white  ensign, 
whose  crew,  as  she  steamed  by  the  Japanese, 
lined  the  rails  and  gave  her  three  hearty 
British  cheers.  Much  may  be  forgiven  to 
seamen  as  clever  as  this. 

In  the  Bay  of  Bengal  the  Emden  took  and 
sank  between  September  10  and  September  14 
the  Indus  (3,413  tons),  the  Lovat  (6,102  tons), 
the  Killin  (3,544  tons),  the  Diplomat  (7,615 
tons),  and  the  Trabbooh  (4,028  tons).  On 
September  12  the  Kabinga,  of  4,657  tons,  was 
taken  and  released.  On  September  14  the 
Clan  Matheson,  of  4,775  tons,  was  sunk.  On 
September  30  there  were  taken  and  sunk  the 
King  Lud  (3,650  tons),  the  Foyle  (4,147  tons), 
the  Ribera  (3,500  tons),  and  the  Tymeric 
(3,314  tons).  On  the  same  date  the  Buresk 
[4,350  tons)  was  captured,  and  the  Gryfevale 
[4,437  tons)  was  taken  and  released.  The 
Pontoporos,  taken  by  the  Emden,  was  released 
by  H.M.S.  Yarmouth  on  October  16.  On 
October  20  were  taken  and  sunk  the  Troilus 


(7,562  tons),  the  Clan  Grant  (3,948  tons),  the 
Benmohr  (4,806  tons),  the  Chilkana  (5,220  tons), 
and  the  Ponrabbel  (473  tons).  On  the  same 
date  the  Exford  (4,542  tons)  and  the  Saint 
Egbert  (5,r)96  tons)  were  captured  but  not 
sunk.  Thas  some  70,000  tons  of  British  ship- 
ping were  destroyed  in  seven  weeks  ;  it  is  for- 
tunate indeed  for  the  Empire  that  other  com- 
merce raiders  were  not  so  successful. 

Some  further  exploits  of  the  Emden  are 
described  in  the  following  extracts  from  a  log 
kt'pt  by  one  of  her  petty  ofificers  : 

September  22. — This  night  off  Madras.  One  of  the 
crew  had  worked  there,  and  he  informed  the  captain  of 
the  oil  tanks  situated  at  entrance  to  harbour.  At  9.30 
p.m.  Emden  crept  in,  turned  searchlights  on  to  tanks,  and 
fired  two  broadsides  to  find  the  range.  Searchlights  then 
shut  off,  and  125  shells  fired  in  salvos,  some  hitting  a 
ship.  Tanks  set  on  fire,  and  tremendous  blaze  arose. 
Emden  retired  at  full  .speed  to  north-east.  Shore  bat- 
teries opened  fire,  but  shells  fell  short,  and  none  hit  the 
Emden. 

September  23. — This  morning  the  glare  of  the  fire  at 
Madras  could  still  be  seen  on  the  horizon,  though  about 
100  miles  away.  Emden  sailed  north-east  to  give 
impression  that  she  was  going  toward-s  Calcutta,  but 
when  out  of  sight  turned  southwards  round  the  east 
coast  of  Ceylon. 

October  10. — Visited  island  of  Diego  Garcia,  in  the 
middle  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  about  half-way  between 
Africa  and  Sumatra.  The  few  European  families  here 
had  not  yet  heard  of  the  war,  as  they  only  get  a  steamer 
in  three  months.  Emden  coaling  all  day.  Some  of  the 
engineers  repaired  the  local  motor-boat,  and  were  given 
baskets  of  coconuts  and  fish. 

October  28. — At  4  a.m.,  10  miles  outside  Penang, 
extra  funnel  hoisted  to  make  the  Emden  appear  like 
British  cruisers.  From  the  entrance  of  the  harbour  at 
5  a.m.  could  be  seen  in  the  distance  several  ships,  and 
well  in  front  of  them  an  unknown  cruiser.  On  steaming 
in  to  a  I'ange  of  about  600  yards,  this  was  found  to  be  the 
Russian  cruiser  Jemtchug.  The  Emden  fired  two  tor- 
pedoes, the  first  hitting  the  cruiser  just  under  the  after 
funnel,  whereupon  she  was  seen  to  sink  about  4  feet. 
The  second,  fired  at  closer  range,  struck  just  vuider  the 
bridge,  when  a  terrible  explosion  occurred.  During  this 
time  the  Emden  fired  salvo  after  salvo — in  all  100  shots. 
The  Jemtchug  fired  a  fev/  shots,  some  of  which  hit  ships 
in  the  harbour  behind  the  Emden,  but  none  hit  the 
Emden.  The  Emden  had  no  idea  that  the  Russian 
cruiser  would  be  in  Penang,  but  expected  to  find  the 
French  cruiser  Dupleix  and  the  French  destroyer  Mous- 
quet.  Tlie  Mousquet  was  on  patrol  duty  outside  the 
harbour,  and  was  afterwards  reported  to  have  seen  the 
Emden,  but  thought  she  was  a  British  cruiser.  The 
Emden  had  now  tvirned,  and  was  lea\-ing  the  harbour  at 
full  speed.  Thirty  miles  out  she  met  a  steamer.  On 
approaching  it  she  hoisted  the  red  flag,  meaning  that 
she  was  a  powder  steamer.  The  stranger,  which  was  the 
British  steamer  Glenturret,  had  signalled  the  shore  for  a 
pilot,  and  the  launch  had  just  reached  her.  The  Emden 
had  got  out  her  boats  when  a  warship  appeared  on  the 
horizon.  The  Emden  immediately  ordered  her  boats 
to  return,  and  made  off,  as  the  warship  appeared  to  be  a 
large  one.  This  was,  however,  only  the  effect  of  the 
early  morning  mirage.  As  the  ships  closed  at  about 
3,800  yards  the  stranger  was  found  to  be  the  French 
destroyer  Mousquet.  The  Emden  opened  fire.  The 
first  few  shots  hit  the  Mousquet's  engine-room,  and  after 
several  salvos  the  Emden  ceased  fire,  expecting  the 
Frenchman  to  be  wrecked  and  to  surrender.  Instead, 
the    Mousquet   went   on   firing   about    10   shots.     None, 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


125 


THE    LAST    OF   THE    "EMDHN" 

Left  top  corner:  Deck  of  the  "  Emden  "  after  the  battle:    right  top  and  centre:    "  Fmden's' 
removing  stores  at  Cocos-Keeling  Islands;  bottom:  the  "Emden"  aground. 


crew 


30—^ 


126 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


Re  Fere  nee 

Course  of  HMS.  SYDNEY 

'>       »    EMDEN     


Position  oF 
HMS. SYDNEY. 

at  9.15  am.    / 


0J4I 


Scale  oF  Miles 

2  3 


4-5  6 


DIRECTION  I. 

(Cable  Station) 


lOOq 


SKETCH    ILLUSTRATING    THE     FIGHT     BETWEEN    H.M.S.    "SYDNEY"    AND    THE 

"EMDEN." 

The  numbers  denote  corresponding  relative  positions. 


however,  hit  the  Emden,  although  some  fell  150  yards  in 
front  of  her.  The  Mousquet's  crew  afterwards  said  that 
they  had  fired  two  torpedoes,  but  the  Emden  did  not 
see  these.  The  Emden  began  firing  again,  and  the 
Mousquet  sank,  bows  first.  The  Emden  ceased  fire, 
and  rescued  36  Frenchmen,  three  of  whom  died  after- 
wards. This  involved  delay,  and  another  destroyer  was 
seen  approaching  from  Penang.  The  Emden  at  once 
steamed  for  the  Indian  Ocean  at  full  speed.  After  being 
chased  for  four  hours  by  the  destroyer  the  Emden  entered 
a  heavy  rainstorm,  and  the  destroyer  was  lost  to  sight. 

The  Inst  act  in  the  drama  of  the  Emden  took 

place  off  the  Cocos-Keeling  Islands  in  the  Indian 

Ocean.    They  are  situated  in  latitude  12  South, 

some  500  miles  south-west  of  Java  Head  and 

Sunda  Straits.     They  were  discovered  bj^  the 

English,  and  consist  of  a  group  of  coral  islets 

where  the  coconut  palm  grows  in  abundance. 

They  are  in  possession  of  Mr.  Ross,  a  descendant 

of  Captain  J.  C.  Ross,  who,  in  the  good  ship 


Borneo,  belonging  to  Hare  &  Son  of  London, 
took  possession  of  the  islands  and  settled  here 
in  1825.  When  the  island  of  Krakatoa  exploded 
like  a  bomb  in  the  year  1883,  and  altered  all  the 
topography  of  Sunda  Straits,  ashes  and  pumice 
floated  feet  thick  on  the  surface  of  the  Indian 
Ocean.  In  spito  of  the  remoteness  of  Cocos- 
Keeling  from  the  scene  of  the  explosion,  500 
miles  at  least,  the  lagoons  in  Cocos  were  so 
choked  with  the  floating  pumice  as  actually  to 
reclaim  a  portion  of  them. 

It  was  to  this  desolate  spot  in  the  Indian 
Ocean  that  Captain  von  Miiller  brought  his  ship 
in  the  early  days  of  November  ;  with  liim  was 
one  of  his  captures,  the  Biu-esk^  which  was  full 
of  coal.  The  object  of  this  visit  of  the  Emden 
was  the  destruction  of  the  important  wireless 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


127 


station  that  is  established  on  the  islands,  and 
on  the  morning  of  November  9  the  officials  in 
charge  were  unpleasantly  surprised  by  the 
landing  of  an  armed  boat's  crew  from  a  cruiser 
which  had  come  to  an  anchor,  and  which  they 
first  imagined  to  be  H.M.S.  Minotaiu-.  They 
were  quickly  undeceived  by  the  German  officer 
in  charge  of  the  party,  who  informed  them  that 
their  operations  from  the  wireless  station  had 
greatly  hampered  the  movements  of  the  cruiser. 
One  detachment  of  the  Germans  then  rounded 
up  all  the  officials  and  their  servants,  placing 
them  under  a  strict  guard,  wliile  a  second  party 
prepared  to  blow  up  the  wireless  installation  and 
to  .smash  the  instrument  rooms  of  the  cable 
office.  This  they  did  most  thoroughly,  but  the 
officials  seem  to  have  kept  their  heads  in  the 
most  praiseworthy  manner,  as,  just  a.s  soon  as 
they  discovered  that  the  eneiny  was  upon  them, 
they  sent  out  distress  signals  by  wireless,  and 
warned  adjacent  stations  by  cable  that  they 
were  about  to  be  smashed  up.  The  landing 
party  now  blew  vip  tlie  wireless  mast  and  the 
store  in  which  spare  cable  and  cable  gear  was 
kept ;  a  third  explosion  wrecked  the  wireless 
hut  and  completed  the  destruction  of  the 
installation.  The  dynamo  rooms  and  workshops 
were  destroyed  with  flogging  hammers  and  axes, 
everything  breakable,  including  clocks,  being 
smashed  to  atoms.  Their  next  proceeding  was 
to  cut  the  shore  ends  of  the  submarine  cables, 


and  this  was  done  in  full  view  of  the  prisoners. 
There  are  three  cables  from  the  Cocos — to 
Perth,  to  Batavia,  and  to  Rodriguez — and  the 
pleasure  of  the  prisoners  can  bo  imagined  when 
they  saw  the  Germans  spend  much  hard  labour 
in  destroying  a  dummy  cable.  Eventually  the 
Perth  cable  and  the  dummy  were  cut,  the  others 
being  left,  presumably  becau.se  the  Germans  did 
not  know  that  they  existed. 

The  party  from  the  Emden  had  landed  at 
7.30  a.m.,  and  by  9.20  their  mission  of  destruc- 
tion was  accompHshed.  At  this  time  a  signal 
was  blo^\•n  on  the  siren  from  the  ship  ;  the 
officer  in  comixiand  collected  his  men,  marched 
them  down  to  the  beach,  and  re-embarked. 
The  telegraphists  report  that  they  were  fairly 
and  courteously  treated.  On  arrival  the  Emden 
was  still  using  her  now  famous  fourth  fiumel, 
a  dummy,  and  this  it  was  that  caused  the 
telegraphists  to  mistake  her  in  the  first  instance 
for  the  IMinotaur,  which  is  a  four  funnelled 
armoured  cruiser.  As  she  steamed  away  in  the 
bright  light  of  the  tropic  morning  for  what  was 
so  shortly  to  prove  her  last  cruise,  the  Emden 
hauled  down  and  stowed  away  her  dummy. 

The  action  that  ensued  between  the  Sydney 
and  the  Emden  is  here  given  in  the  official 
dispatch  of  Captain  Glossop,  dated  from 
Colombo  on  November  15  : 

I  have  the  honour  to  report  that  whilst  on  escort  duty 
witli   the  convoy  under  the   charge  of  Captain  Silver, 


i 

"          . 

THi 

• 

R 

n^ 

AC 

mm 


^ 


OIL    TANKS    AT    MADRAS. 


128 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


EasterJ. 


Coqulmbo^ 

Talcahuanafj     i^ 
Cqrone/fy 


t'^   P^  C  I  F  I  C 

<r-J^o_  Melbourne  _  6000 

(Mercator) 


S 


V 


^ 


Fall^land  I? 


Cape  Horn 


760 


THE    GORONEL    AND    FALKLAND    AGTIOiNS. 


H.M.A.S.  jNIelbourne,  at  6.30  a.m.  on  Monday,  Novem- 
ber 9,  a  wireless  message  from  Cocos  was  heard  reporting 
that  a  foreign  warship  was  off  the  entrance.  I  was 
ordered  to  raise  steam  for  full  speed  at  7.0  a.m.  and 
proceeded  thither.  I  worked  up  to  20  knots,  and  at 
9.15  a.m.  sighted  land  ahead  and  almost  immediately 
the  smoke  of  a  ship,  which  proved  to  be  H.l.G.M.S. 
Emden,  coming  out  towards  me  at  a  great  rate.  At 
9.40  a.m.  fire  was  opened,  she  firing  the  first  shot.  I 
kept  my  distance  as  much  as  possible  to  obtain  the 
advantage  of  my  guns.  Her  fire  was  very  accurate  and 
rapid  to  begin  with,  but  seemed  to  slacken  very  quickly, 
all  casualties  occurring  in  this  ship  almost  immediately. 
First  the  foremost  funnel  of  her  went,  secondly  the  fore- 
mast, and  she  was  badly  on  fire  aft,  then  the  second 
funnel  went,  and  lastly  the  third  funnel,  and  I  saw  she 


was  making  for  the  beach  on  North  Keeling  Island, 
where  she  grounded  at  11.20  a.m.  I  gave  her  two  more 
broadsides  and  left  her  to  pursue  a  merchant  ship  which 
had  come  up  during  the  action. 

2.  Although  I  had  guns  on  this  merchant  ship  at  odd 
times  during  the  action  I  had  not  fired,  and  as  she  was 
making  off  fast  I  pursued  and  overtook  her  at  12.10, 
firing  a  gun  across  her  bows,  and  hoisting  International 
Code  Signal  to  stop,  which  she  did.  I  sent  an  armed 
boat,  and  foimd  her  to  be  the  s.s.  Buresk,  a  captured 
British  collier,  with  18  Chinese  crew,  1  English  steward, 
1  Norwegian  cook,  and  a  German  prize  crew  of  3  officers, 
1  warrant  officer  and  12  men.  The  ship  unfortunately 
was  sinking,  the  Kingston  knocked  out  and  damaged 
to  prevent  repairing,  so  I  took  all  on  board,  fired  four 
shells  into  her,  and  returned  to    Emden,  passing  men 


VALPARAISO    HARBOUR. 
The  "  Scharnhorst "  and  "Gneisenau"  in  the  distance  on  the  left. 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


129 


ewimming  in  the  water,  for  whom  I  left  two  boats  I  was 
towing  from  Buresk. 

3.  On  arriving  again  off  Emden,  she  still  had  her 
colours  up  at  mainmast  head.  I  inquired  by  signal. 
International  Code,  "  Will  you  surrender  ?  "  and  received 
a  reply  in  Morse,  "  What  signal  ?  No  signal  books." 
I  then  made  in  Morse,  "  Do  you  surrender  ?  "  and  sub- 
sequently, "  Have  you  received  my  signal  ?  "  to  neither 
of  which  did  I  get  an  answer.  The  German  officers  on 
board  gave  me  to  understand  that  the  captain  would 
never  surrender,  and  therefore,  though  very  reluctantly, 
I  again  fired  at  her  at  4.30  p.m.,  ceasing  at  4.35,  as  she 
showed  white  flags  and  hauled  down  her  ensign  by 
sending  a  man  aloft. 

4.  I  then  left  Emden  and  returned  and  picked  up  the 
Burcsk's  two  boats,  rescuing  two  sailors  (5.0  p.m.),  who 
had  been  in  the  water  all  day.  I  returned  and  sent  in 
one  boat  to  Emden,  manned  by  her  own  prize  crew 
from  Buresk  and  one  officer,  and  stating  I  would  return 
to  their  assistance  next  morning. 

5.  I  lay  on  and  off  all  night,  and  communicated  with 
Direction  Island  at  8.0  a.m.,  November  10,  to  find  that 
the  Emden's  party,  consisting  of  three  officers  and  40  men, 
one  launch  and  two  cutters,  had  seized  and  provisioned 
a  70-tons  schooner  (the  Ayesha),  having  four  Maxinas 
with  two  belts  to  each.  They  left  the  previous  night 
at  six  o'clock.  The  wireless  station  was  entirely  de- 
stroyed, one  cable  cut,  one  damaged  and  one  intact.  I 
borrowed  a  doctor  and  two  assistants,  and  proceeded  as 
fast  as  possible  to  Emden's  assistance. 

6.  I  sent  an  officer  on  board  to  see  the  captain,  and 
in  view  of  the  large  number  of  prisoners  and  wounded 
and  lack  of  accommodation,  etc.,  in  this  ship,  and  the 
absolute  impossibility  of  leaving  them  where  they  were, 
he  agreed  that  if  I  received  his  officers  and  men  and  all 
wounded,  "  then  as  for  such  time  as  they  remained  in 
Sydney  they  would  cause  no  interference  with  ship  or 
fittings,  and  would  be  amenable  to  the  ship's  discipline." 
I  therefore  set  to  work  at  once  to  tranship  them— a  most 
difiicult  operation,  the  ship  being  on  weather  side  of 
island  and  the  send  alongside  very  heavy.  The  con- 
ditions in  the  Emden  were  indescribable.  I  received  tb.e 
last  from  her  at  6.0  p.m.,  then  had  to  go  roiuid  to  the 
loe  side  to  pick  up  20  more  men  who  had  managed  to 
get  ashore  from  the  ship. 

7.  Darkness  came  on  before  this  could  be  accom- 
plished, and  the  ship  again  stood  off  and  on  ail  night, 
resuming  operations  at  5.0  a.m.  on  November  11,  a 
cutter's  crew  having  to  land  with  stretchers  to  bring 
wounded  round  to  embarking  point.  A  German  officer, 
a  doctor,  died  ashore  the  previous  day.  The  ship  in  the 
meantime  ran  over  to  Direction  Island  to  return  their 
doctor  and  assistants,  send  cables,  and  was  back  again 
at  lO.O  a.m.,  embarked  the  remainder  of  woimded,  and 
proceeded  for  Colombo  by  10.35  a.m.  Wednesday, 
November  11. 

8.  Total  casualties  in  Sydney  :  Killed,  3  ;  severely 
wounded  (since  dead),  1 ;  severely  wounded,  4  ;  wounded, 
4  ;  slightly  wounded,  4.  In  the  Emden  I  can  only 
approximately  state  the  killed  at  7  officers  and  108  men 
from  captain's  statement.  I  had  on  board  11  officers, 
9  warrant  officers  and  191  men,  of  whom  3  officers  and 
53  men  were  wounded,  and  of  this  number  1  officer  and 
3  men  have  since  died  of  wounds. 

9.  The  damage  to  Sydney's  hull  and  fittings  was 
surprisingly  small  ;  in  all  about  10  hits  seem  to  have 
been  made.  The  engine  and  boiler  rooms  and  funnels 
escaped  entirely. 

10.  I  have  great  pleasure  in  stating  that  the  behaviour 
of  the  ship's  company  was  excellent  in  every  way,  and 
with  such  a  large  proportion  of  young  hands  and  people 
under  training  it  is  all  the  more  gratifying. 

It  will  bo  seen  from  Captain  Glossop's 
dispatch  that  he  was  on  escort  duty  with  the 
convoy  under  the  charge  of  Captain  Silver,  of 


[Elliott  &  fry. 

THE     LATE     REAR-ADMIRAL    SIR 
CHRISTOPHER    CRADOCK, 

H.M  A.S.  Melbourne.  This  convoy  was  carrying 
Australian  and  New  Zealand  troops  to  the  scene 
of  the  great  conflict  in  Europe.  The  act  of  self- 
denial  on  the  part  of  Captain  Silver  in  sending 
the  Sydney  to  engage  the  Emden  instead  of 
taking  that  duty  upon  himself  certainly  deserves 
to  bo  noted.  This  officer  denied  to  liimself  and 
to  the  officers  and  men  under  his  command  the 
privilege  of  dealing  with  the  notorious  raider, 
and  in  so  doing  ho  was  actuated  solely  by  his 
high  sense  of  duty  and  the  responsibility  that 
he  owed  to  his  country.  In  his  judgment  the 
Sydney  was  the  more  suitable  ship,  so  she  was 
sent,  and  the  Melbourne  renaained  with  her 
convoy  tuitil  the  affair  was  concluded. 

Action  off  the  Coast  of  Chile. 

On    Friday,    November    6,    the    Admiralty 

received   "  trustworthy  information  "   that  an 

action  had  been  fought  on  the  Chilean  coast 

on  Sunday,  November  I,  between  H.M.S.  Good 

Hope,  Momnouth,   and   Glasgow,  in  company 

with    the    armed    liner    Otranto,    under    the 

command     of     Rear-Admiral    Sir    Christopher 

Cradock,  and  the  German  vessels  Scharnliorst, 

Gneisenau,  Leipzig,  and  Dresden.  The  following 

is  a  description  of  the  vessels  that  took  part 

in  the  affair  : 

Good     Hoi'E. — Armoured    cruiser    of     14,100    tons. 
Built  at  Govan  and  launched  in  1901.     Length,  515  ft.; 


130 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY.    0^    THE,    WAR. 


beairi,  71  ft.  ;  draught  of  water,  28  ft.  Her  armament 
consisted  of  two  9-2-inch  guns,  sixteen  C-inch,  twelve 
12-pounders,  three  3-pounders,  two  machine  guns,  and 
she  was  also  fitted  with  two  torpedo  tubes.  The  9-2 
gun  throws  a  shell  of  380  pounds  weight,  the  6-inch  one 
of  100  pounds  weight. 

Monmouth. — Armoured  cruiser  of  9,800  tons.  Built 
in  Glasgow  and  completed  in  1903.  Length,  440  ft.  ; 
beam,  66  ft. ;  draught  of  water,  24  J  ft.  Her  armament 
consisted  of  fourteen  6-inch  guns,  eight  12-pounders, 
three  3-pounders,  eight  machine  guns,  and  two  torpedo 
tubes.     Her  best  speed  was  23' 9  knots. 

Glasgow. — Liglit  cruiser  of  4,800  tons.  Built  by 
Fairfield  and  completed  January,  1911.  Length,  430  ft.; 
beam,  47  ft.  ;  draught  of  water,  15J  ft.  Her  armament 
consists  of  two  6-inch  guns,  ten  4-inch,  four  3-pounders, 
and  two  torpedo  tubes.     Her  speed  is  25  knots. 

Otbanto. — Of  the  Orient  Lino.  Twin-screw  steamer 
of  12,100  tons,  launched  from  Workman  &  Clark's  yard 
at  Belfast  in  1909.  Commissioned  August,  1914,  as  an 
auxiliary  cruiser. 

The  German  armoured  cruisers  Scharnhorst  and 
Gneisenau,  of  11,600  tons,  were  sister  ships,  and  were 
completed  in  1907.  Their  length  was  449J  ft.  ;  beam, 
71  ft.  ;  draught  of  water,  25  ft.  Their  .irraament  con- 
sisted of  eight  8-2-inch  guns  (weight  of  projectile  275 
pounds),  six  C-inch,  twenty  24-pouiiders,  four  machine 
guns,  and  four  torpedo  tubes. 

Dresden. — Third-class  cruiser,  3,600  tons.  Sister 
ship  to  the  Emden.  Completed  1909.  Length,  387  ft.  ; 
beam,  43i  ft.  ;  draught  of  water,  17|  ft.  She  was 
armed  with  ten  4-1-inch  guns,  eight  5-pounders,  four 
machine  guns,  and  two  torpedo  tubes. 

NuRXBEBG. — Same  type  and  armament  as  Dresden, 
but  3,450  tons  displacement. 

Leipzig. — Third-class  cruiser,  3,250  tons.  Completed 
1906.  Length,  341  ft.  ;  beam,  43^  ft.  ;  maximum 
draught,  17^  ft.  She  was  armed  with  ten  4-1 -inch 
guns,  ten  1 -pounders,  four  machine  guns,  and  two 
torpedo  tubes. 

The  first  news  that  reached  tliis  country  of 
tliis  disastrous  action  was  hardly  credited  in 


official  circles,  and  in  an  official  statement  the 
Secretary  of  the  Admiralty  stated  : 

The  Admiralty  cannot  accept  these  facts  as  accurate 
at  the  present  time,  for  the  battleship  Canopus,  which 
had  been  specially  sent  to  strengthen  Admiral  Cradock'a 
squadron,  and  would  give  him  a  decided  superiority,  is 
not  mentioned  in  them,  and  further,  although  five 
German  ships  are  concentrated  in  Chilean  waters,  only 
three  have  come  into  Valparaiso  harbour.  It  is  possible, 
therefore,  that  when  full  accounts  of  the  action  are 
received  they  may  considerably  modify  the  German 
version. 

Unfortunately  for  official  optimism  the  obso- 
lescent Canopus*  was  not  with  the  cruisers  in 
the  action.  The  moral  of  this  battle  was  the 
same  as  that  of  those  by  which  it  was  suc- 
ceeded— that,  given  reasonably  good  shooting 
and  skill  in  the  handling,  the  ship  with  the 
better  artillery  will  win  any  action.  The  Good 
Hope  represented  one  of  the  worst  and  most 
expensive  types  of  ship  ever  built  for  the  Navy 
in  modern  times.  She  was  an  immense  target 
and  much  under-gunned  for  her  displacement. 
The  Monmouth,  also  of  nearly  10,000  tons, 
carried  no  gun  larger  than  a  6 -inch. 


*  Canopus,  battleship  of  12,950  tons,  built  at  Ports- 
mouth, and  completed  in  1900.  Length,  400  ft.  ; 
beam,  74  ft.  ;  draught  of  water,  26|  ft.  Her  armament 
consists  of  four  12-inch  guns  (mark  8,  35  calibre,  weight 
of  projectile  850  pounds),  twelve  6-inch,  ton  12-poundera 
(12  cwt.),  two  12-pounders  (8  cwt.),  six  3-pounders,  two 
Maxims,  four  torpedo  tubes.  Speed  (when  new)  18-5 
knots. 


1.     H.M.S.    "MONMOUTH." 


II.     H.M.S.    "GOOD    HOPE." 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


131 


\ 
\ 


n/l 


\ 


V 


4  Q  OTRANTO 


\         3  Q  GLASGOW 
\    ZnMONMOUW 
I  Q  GOOD  HOPE 


^    c^     to'    <5r.'' 


\   >  ;    I 

' ''  / 

I  I 
I  / 


I 

i 


'fS  Mil, 


es- 


Tumbes 


OTRANTO 


X 


1 


A 


= /I 

^1 


y  <i 


/ 


[/      MONMOUTH        I     \      / 

/I       Outof  Actioa      |/>^  A 

i 


^4 


3D  HOP£  ' 


GOOD 

Out  of  Action 


[7»50/;ArJ 


^^1, 


'Talcaliuano 

San  Vicente 


COISCEPCION 


Coronel 


Loto 


^ 


i> 


S*^       Arauco 
Bay 


Arauco 


:f0i7\ 


PLAN    OF    THE    ACTION    OFF    CORONEL. 


The  comparison  of  guns  in  the  two  squadrons 
runs  thus  : 


Germaa. 
16  8-2-mch 
12  6-inch 
30  4-1-inch 
40  24-pounder3 
16  o-pounders 


British. 
2  9-2-inch 
32  6-inch 
10  4-inch 
20  12-poundors 
10  3-Dounder3 


The  British  ships  were  outclassed,  as  their 
6-inch  guns  of  an  old  mark  were  unlikely  to 
inflict  damage  on  the  enemy  at  long  ranges,  no 


matter  how  well  served  ;  while  at  the  same 
time  the  comparatively  modern  8*2's  of  the 
Germans  would  be  finding  their  target,  the 
gmuiers  being  unhampered  by  the  disturbing 
factor  of  hits  on  their  own  ships.  The  Scharn- 
horst  had  won  the  gold  medal  for  big-ship 
shooting  presented  by  the  Kaiser,  and  the 
Gneisenau  was  also  extremely  efficient  in 
gunnery. 

On   yunday,   November    1,    l'J14,    tlu*   Good 


132 


THE    TIMES    HlSTOIiY    OF    THE    WAR. 


Hope,  Monmouth  and  Glasgow  came  up  with 
the  Scharnhorst,  Gneisenau,  Leipzig,  and 
Dresden.  There  was  a  strong  wind  and  a  very 
considerable  sea  ;  both  squadrons  were  steaming 
to  the  southward,  and  the  Germans  kept  out  of 
range  and  declined  action  until  sxinset,  when 
the  light  gave  them  an  important  advantage. 
Early  in  the  battle,  which  lasted  about  two 
hours,  "both  the  Good  Hope  and  Monmouth 
caught  fire,  but  they  continued  fighting  until 
nearly  dark,  when  a  serious  explosion  took  place 
in  the  Good  Hope  and  she  foundered.  It  was 
stated  that  the  Monmouth  hauled  off  at  dark, 
making  water  badly,  and  appeared  vmable  to 
steam .  away.  We  now  know,  however,  that 
she  closed  with  the  enemy  with  the  greatest 
gallantry  with  the  intention  of  ramming ;  that 
she  was  sunk  in  the  attempt  quite  close  to  the 
enemy  ships  ;  and  that  although  the  sea  was 
by  no  means  too  bad,  no  attempt  was  made  to 
save  the  English  sailors  struggling  in  the  water. 
On  November  17  the  Secretary  of  the 
Admiralty  announced  that  the  following  report 
had  been  received  from  Captain  John  Luce,  of 
H.M.S.  Glasgow : 

Glasgow  left  Coronel  9  a.m.  on  November  1  to  rejoin 
Good  Hope  (flagship).  Monmouth  and  Otranto  at  ren- 
dezvous. At  2  p.m.  flagship  signalled  that  apparently 
from  wireless  calls  there  was  an  enemy  ship  to  north- 
ward. Orders  were  given  for  squadron  to  spread 
N.E.  by  E.  in  the  following  order  :  Good  Hope,  Mon- 
mouth, Otranto,  and  Glasgow,  speed  to  be  worked  up  to 


15  knots.  4.20  p.m..  saw  smoke  ;  proved  to  be  enemy 
ships,  one  small  cruiser  and  two  armoured  cruisers. 
Gla.sgow  reported  to  Admiral,  ships  in  sight  were  warned, 
and  all  concentrated  on  Good  Hope.  At  5.0  p.m.  Good 
Hope  was  sighted. 

5.47  p.m.,  squadron  formed  in  line-ahead  in  following 
order :  Good  Hope,  Monmouth,  Glasgow,  Otranto. 
Enemy,  who  had  turned  south,  were  now  in  .single  hne- 
ahead  12  miles  off,  Scharnhorst  and  Gneisenau  leading. 
6. 18- p.m.,  speed  ordered  to  17  knots,  and  flagship  sig- 
nalled Canopus,  "  I  am  going  to  attack  enemy  now." 
Enemy  were  now  15,000  yards  away,  and  maintained 
this  range,  at  the  same  time  jambing  wireless  signals. 

By  this  tune  sun  was  setting  ijninediately  hehind  us 
from  enemy  position,  and  while  it  remained  above 
horizon  we  had  advantage  in  light,  but  range  too  great. 
C.55  p.m.,  sun  set,  and  visibility  conditions  alt^ered.  our 
ships  being  silhouetted  against  afterglow,  and  failing 
light  made  enemy  difficult  to  see. 

7.3  p.m.,  enemy  opened  tire  12,000  yards,  followed  in 
quick  succession  by  Good  Hope,  Monmouth,  Glasgow. 
Two  squadrons  were  now  converging,  and  each  ship 
engaged  opposite  number  in  the  line.  Growing  darkness 
and  heavy  spray  of  head  sea  made  firing  diflficult,  par- 
ticularly for  main  deck  guns  of  Good  Hope  and  ilon- 
mouth.  Enemy  firing  salvos  got  range  quickly,  and 
their  third  salvo  caused  fire  to  break  out  on  fore  part  of 
both  ships,  which  were  constantly  on  fire  till  7.45  p.m. 
7.50  p.m.,  immense  explosion  occurred  on  Good  Hope 
amidships,  flames  reaching  200  ft.  hi  ah.  Total  destrua- 
tion  must  have  followed.     It  was  now  q  lite  dar'c. 

Both  sides  continued  firing  at  flashes  of  opposin  *  guns 
Monmouth  was  badly  down  by  the  bow,  and  turned 
away  to  get  stern  to  sea,  signalling  to  Glasgow  to  that 
effect.  8.30  p.m..  Glasgow  signalled  to  Monmouth  : 
"  Enemy  following  us,"  but  received  no  reply.  Under 
rising  moon  enemy's  ships  were  now  seen  approaching, 
and  as  Glasgow  could  render  Monmouth  no  assistance, 
she  proceeded  at  full  speed  to  avoid  destruction.  8.50 
p.m.,  lost  sight  of  enemy.  9.20  p.m.,  observed  75  flashes 
of  fire,  which  was  no  doubt  final  attack  on  Monmouth. 

Nothing  could  have  been  more  admirable  than  con» 
duct  of  officers  and  men  throughout.     Though  it  was 


A    DESTROYER'S    TORPEDO    TUBES. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


183 


.S^anta  Cru7 


r  I  c 


0  c  f  ^^ 


'"Sffe.  "^'^- 


Queen  Cfyary  ^^^^tr^Wh 


Bcave 
W 


?»' 


^^^ 


^-'^^^'^^-..^., 


'^. 


■^■^o.  / 


Beauchenel.      / 

FALKLAND     ISLANDS. 

(  British  )      ^ 


A. 


/ 


r 


1 


^jAWolIaston  I? 
Cape  Horn^-^'- 


o|^. 


,r£>C?^  Sbaben  I. 

^<Ql>'"  SCALE  or  MILES. 

^^    ^  0  50  100 

I   1—1  i—i    I— I    I— I    I— I 


7SO 


200 


MAP    SHOWING    POSITION    OF    THE    FALKLAND    ISLANDS. 


most  trying  to  receive  great  volume  of  fire  without 
chance  of  returning  it  adequately,  all  kept  perfectly 
cool,  there  was  no  wild  firing,  and  discipline  was  the 
same  as  at  battle  practice.  When  target  ceased  to  be 
visible,  gunlayers  spontaneously  ceased  fire.  The 
sorious  reverse  sustained  has  entirely  failed  to  impair 
the  spirit  of  officers  and  ship's  company,  and  it  is  our 
unanimous  wish  to  meet  the  eneniy  again  as  soon  as 
possible. 

The  Admiral,  the  gallant  and  well-beloved 
Cradock,  had  gone  to  his  long  home  with  a 
guard  accompanying  him  of  himdreds  of  those 
seamen  he  had  led  in  action.  No  end  could 
have  been  more  consonant  with  his  own  wishes 
than  that  he  should  die  for  the  country  he  had 
served  so  well. 

The  Glasgow,  sorely  battered,  stood  away 
out  of  action  to  the  southward.  It  was  a 
miracle  that  she  lived  to  tell  the  tale  ;  but  not 
only  did  she  do  so,  but  we  see  from  the  con- 
cluding paragraph  of  the  report  of  Captain 
Luce  in  what  manner  the  action  had  been 
viewed  by  those  on  board.  We  are  told  th.at 
owing  to  internal  damage  from  the  fire  of  the 
enemy  a  good  deal  of  strutting  with  timber 
had  to  be  resorted  to.  in  order  to  shore  up  her 
decks  and  stiffen  damaged  bulkheads.  An 
officer  finding  his  way  along  the  next  morning 


discovered  the  following  inscription  chalked  up 
on  one  of  these  struts  :  "  Epping  Forest,  no 
Germans  admitted  on  any  pretence." 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  cruisers 
Aboukir,  Cressy,  and  Hogue  were  sunlc  in  the 
North  Sea  by  submarines  on  September  22  : 
and  that  this  feat  was  received  with  delirious 
joy  in  Germany.  The  satisfaction  on  that 
occasion  was  nothing  to  the  outburst  when  the 
news  was  received  in  Berlin  of  the  destruction 
of  Admiral  Cradock's  two  ships.  The  hated 
English  had  once  more  been  defeated  on  their 
own  element,  the  sea,  and  loud  were  the  boast- 
ings and  the  predictions  of  further  disasters  in 
store  for  the  British  Navy  in  the  future. 

There  was  no  minimising  the  fact  that  our 
arms  had  received  a  serious  reverse,  or  that  the 
enemy  had  legitimate  cause  for  jubilation. 
Admiral  von  Spec  had  not  been  heard  of  for 
nearly  six  weeks  before  the  battle  ofT  the 
Chilean  coast,  and  his  reappearance  and  success 
were  a  mortifying  blow  to  British  prestige. 
The  German  squadron,  as  we  Icnow,  had 
eluded  the  Japanese  squadrons  in  the  Far 
East,  the  Scharnliorst  and  the  Gneisenau  having 
left  Kiao-Chau  just  before  war  broke  out. 
'  30— :j 


134 


THE    TIMES    UlSTOHY    OF    THE     WAR. 


They  were  not  heard  of  again  until  September  22, 
when  they  arrived  off  Papeete  in  the  island  of 
Tahiti,  where  they  sank  a  small  and  unarmed 
French  gunboat  and  bombarded  the  defenceless 
town.  Later  on  it  was  discovered  that  the  two 
vessels  had  visited  Apia  harbour  on  Septem- 
ber 14,  but  had  remained  only  a  short  time. 
In  October  the  Leipzig  sank  a  steamer  called 
the  Bankfields  off  Peru,  homeward  bound  from 
Eten  with  a  cargo  of  six  thousand  tons  of  sugar. 
In  September  she  sank  the  oil-tank  steamer 
Elsinore,  and  in  November  the  Vine  Branch, 
off  the  Chilean  coast,  while  that  vessel  was 
outward  bound  from  England  to  Guayaquil. 
The  Dresden  sank  the  Hj^ades  off  Pernambuco 
on  August  16,  V.  hile  the  vessel  was  bound  from 
the  River  Plate  for  Holland  with  grain,  and  the 
Holmwood  on  August  2G  near  Santa  Maria,  on 
the  voyage  from  Soutli  Wales  to  Bahia  Blanca 
with  coals.  The  Niirnberg  cut  the  cable 
between  Bamfield,  British  Columbia,  and 
Fanning  Island  early  in  September,  but  there 
is  no  record  of  her  having  captured  anj^thing. 
The  large  cruisers  do  not  seem  to  have  gone  in 
for  commerce  destruction. 


Thk  Falkland  Islands  Victory. 

High  speed  in  scouting  vessels,  wireless 
telegraphy,  the  aeroplane,  the  captive  balloon, 
and  the  dirigible  have  rendered  it  increasingly 
difficult  in  the  twentieth  century  to  conduct 
warlike  operations  with  anv-thing  approaching 
to  secrecy.  Not  only  is  the  general  on  land 
no  longer  unaware  of  what  is  happening  on  the 
other  side  of  the  hill,  but  the  admiral  at  sea 
is  overlooked  by  aircraft  when  the  weather  is 
at  all  suitable  for  the  purpose.  Aircraft,  how- 
ever, have  distinct  limitations.  In  ideal 
weather  for  the  purpose  a  Zeppelin  airship 
might  scout  with  most  satisfactory  results  in 
the  North  Sea,  and  might  even  pursue  her 
researches  until  they  included  a  peep  at  the 
harbours  on  the  western  shores  of  Scotland, 
But  the  open  ocean  remaiiis,  and,  at  all  events 
for  the  present,  seems  likely  to  remain,  the 
province  of  the  ship  wh.ch  sails  upon  its  waters. 
Therefore  the  problem  of  coining  up  with  and 
destroying  the  squadron  of  von  Spee  was  a 
matter  that  had  to  be  settled  without  adven- 
titious aid  from  the  firmament  of  heaven. 

Very    seldom    had    retribution    followed    so 


-i»^ 


THE    KAISHR    AMONGST     HIS    SAILORS. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


135 


PORT    STANLEY,    FALKLAND    ISLANDS. 


[Mrs.  Walter. 


•swiftly  on  the  heels  of  action  as  it  did  on  this 
occasion.  The  destruction  of  this  German 
squadron,  an  imperative  necessity  from  the 
first,  had  now  to  be  accomplished  in  the 
shortest  possible  time.  Von  Spee  had  signed 
his  own  death  warrant.  First  we  will  set  down 
■the  bald  Adiniralty  announcement,  which  runs 
as  follows : 

At  7.30  a.m.  on  December  8  the  Scharnhorst,  GneisennuJ 
Niirnberg,  Leipzig  and  Dresden  wore  sighted  near  the 
Falkland  Islands  by  a  British  squadron  under  Vice- 
Admiral  Sir  Frederick  Doveton  Sturdee.  An  action 
•followed,  in  the  course  of  which  the  Scharnhorst,  flying 
the  flag  of  Admiral  Graf  von  Spee,  the  Gneisenau,  and 
the  Leipzig  were  sunk.  The  Dresden  and  the  Numberg 
•made  off  during  the  action,  and  are  being  pursued. 
Two  colliers  were  also  captured.  The  Vice-Admiral 
•reports  that  the  British  casualties  are  very  few  in  number. 
Some  survivors  have  been  rescued  from  the  Gneisenau 
.and  the  Leipzig. 

Thirty-eight  days  only  had  elapsed  between 
the  action  in  the  Pacific  and  that  which  took 
place  in  the  South  Atlantic.  On  November  1 
the  Monmouth  and  the  Good  Hope  were  sunk 
■by  the  German  squadron  ;  on  December  8  they 
were  followed  by  their  destroyers.  The  Falkland 
Islands,  where  the  battle  between  Sturdee  and 
von  Spee  took  place,  are  well  over  7,000  miles 
from  England  ;  yet  in  a  little  over  five  v/eeks 
from  the  time  of  the  disaster  to  Cradock  a 
sufficient  force  had  been  dispatched,  had  found 
the  enemy,  and  had  dealt  with  him  to  his  entire 
discomfiture. 

During  the  war  a  policy  of  silence  was 
'maintained  that  sometimes  proved  irksome 
to  the  public.  A  more  striking  justification  of 
this  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  authorities 
•could  hardly  be  found  than  in  the  success  of  the 
Falkland  Islands  action.  Until  it  was  over  no 
•unauthorised   person   so   much   as   knew   that 


Vice-Admiral  Stvirdee  was  on  his  way,  or  indeed 
that  any  squadron  had  been  dispatched  to  deal 
with  the  situation.  In  the  upshot  the  right  force 
arrived  at  the  right  place  at  the  right  time,  thus 
solving  the  strategical  side  of  the  problem, 
while  its  tactical  outcome  was  all  that  could  be 
desired. 

The  Governor  of  the  Falkland  Islands  had 
heard  from  the  Admiralty  that  he  might  expect 
a  raid  on  the  Islands,  and  had  done  what  he 
could  to  prepare  for  such  an  eventuality. 
Women  and  children  by  an  order  dated  Octo- 
ber 19  were  ordered  to  leave  Port  Stanley,  and 
in  the  meantime  the  men  in  the  island  prepared 


Sea  Miles. 

2  3 

I  I 


L^ 


ADMIRAL    STURDEE'S    SQUADRON    IN 
PORT    STANLEY    HARBOUR. 

L  "Invincible."    2.  "  Inflexible."    3.  "Carnarvon." 

4.   "Glasgow."     5.   "Kent."     6.   "Cornwall." 
7.   "Bristol."       8.   "Macedonia."       9.  "  Canopus." 


136 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


SAFEGUARDS    AGAINST    TORPEDOES. 
Putting  out  nets. 


to  make  the  best  fight  that  they  could,  supposing 
the  enemy  were  to 'appear.  A  wireless  message 
was  received  on  November  3  acquainting  the 
people  on  the  island  of  the  loss  of  the  Good 
Ho2:)e  and  ^Monmouth,  and  this  was  followed  by 
another  from  the  Glasgow  saying  that  that  ship 
and  the  Canopus  were  on  their  way  to  the 
Falklands.  The  presumption  was  that  these 
ships  were  being  followed  by  the  victorious 
Germans.  A  letter  from  a  lady  in  the  Falkland 
Islands  gave  the  following  description  of  the 
state  of  the  Glasgow  on  arrival  : 

The  Glasgow  was  very  badly  damaged,  one  enormous 
hole  in  her  side  being  3  ft.  by  9  ft.  Another  shell  had 
gone  through  the  side  of  the  ship  and  through  the 
captain's  cabin,  demolishing  his  roll-top  desk,  and 
giving  off  such  fumes  that  several  nien  who  rushed  in 
to  put  out  the  fire  were  rendered  unconscious.  There 
were  only  four  slight  casualties,  fortunately,  and  both 
men  and  officers  said  of  each  other  that  thoy  were 
heroes.  The  Glasgow  men  said  that  after  the  Good 
Hope  sank  with  Admiral  Cradock  on  board  their  captain 
became  senior  officer.  When  he  foiuid  himself  damaged, 
and  noticed  that  the  Monmouth  was  in  a  similar  condition, 
he  signalled  to  the  latter  ship  to  steer  a  certain  course 
away  from  the  enemy,  but  received  a  reply  that  as  the 
jhip  was  not  under  control  it  was  impossible  to  obey  the 
order.  He  therefore  steamed  close  to  the  Monmouth, 
which  was  in  a  sinking  condition,  her  bows  being  under 
water,  with  the  men  assembled  in  the  stem.  There  was 
a  heavy  sea  running  ;  the  enemy  was  still  firing,  and 
they  had  to  leave  the  Monmouth  to  her  fate.     As  the 


Glasgow  left  to  seek  safety  in  flight  three  cheers  were 
raised  by  the  Monmouth,  and  that  was  the  last  they 
knew  of  the  ship. 

Impartial  evidence  that  the  British  sailors 
were  left  to  drown  by  the  enemy  is  that  of  the 
German  seamen  themselves.  On  arrival  at 
Valparaiso  they  were  asked  by  a  German  pastor 
why  none  of  the  English  had  been  saved,  and 
whether  it  had  not  been  possible  to  rescue  any 
of  them.  To  this  they  replied  that  it  would  have 
been  qviite  possible  to  do  so,  but  that  they  were 
not  permitted  by  their  oflficers  to  hold  out  a 
helping  hand. 

The  force  at  the  disposal  of  Admiral  Sturdee 
comprised  the  battle  cruisers  Invincible  and 
Inflexible,  the  battleship  Canopus,  the  armoured 
cruisers  Kent  and  Cornwall,  sister  ships  to  the  ill- 
fated  Monmouth,  the  armoured  cruiser  Carnar- 
von (10,850  tons,  armed  with  four  7"5-inch.  six 
G-inch,  two  12-poiuiders,  twenty  3-pounders, 
and  two  torpedo  tubes),  the  sister  light  cruisers 
Glasgow  and  Bristol,  and  the  armed  liner 
Macedonia.  The  Invincible  and  Inflexible  are 
two  of  the  three  battle-craisers  (the  Indomitable 
being  the  third)  which  were  completed  in  1908, 
and  have  a  displacement  of  17,250  tons.  Their 
speed  is  over  28  knots,  and  the  price  of  this 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


137 


increase  over  the  21  knots  of  the  battleship 
Dreadnought  was  the  loss  of  two  12-inch  guns 
and  lighter  armour— a  7 -inch  belt  amidships 
instead  of  an  11-inch,  and  a  4-in  belt  forward 
instead  of  a  G-inch.  Owing  to  the  arrangement 
of  their  turrets  all  their  eight  1 2-inch  guns  can 
be  fired  either  to  port  or  starboard. 

The  details  of  the  German  squadron  have 
already  been  given.  It  is  interesting  to  note 
that  the  Scharnliorst  and  Gneisenau  were 
almost  contemporary  with  the  Invincible  class, 
having  been  completed  in  1907,  but  at  that 
time  Germany  had  not  been  able  to  copy  and 
adopt  the  all-big-gun  ship,  either  as  battleship 
or  as  battle  cruiser. 

What  information  Admiral  von  Spee  had  been 
able  to  gather  concerning  enemy  movements 
since  the  day  on  which  he  sank  the  Good  Hope 
and  the  Monmouth  has  never  become  known, 
but  what  is  quite  certain  is  that  he  was  unaware 
of  the  arrival  of  the  squadron  commanded  by 
Admiral  Sturdee.  It  is  evident  that  the  Ger- 
man commander  was  on  his  way  to  annex  the 
Falkland  Islands,  and  to  use  them  as  his  much- 
needed  base.  Secrecy  and  silence  were  weapons 
as  potent  as  the  guns  of  Sturdee' s  squadron,  and 
the  nation  owes  a  debt  of  gratitude  to  those 
V  ho  succeeded,  totally  unknown  to  the  enemy, 


in  getting  a  powerful  squadron  away  from  home 
waters  to  the  far-distant  Falklands — a  squadron 
which  arrived  exactly  in  time,  and  which  was 
thus  enabled  to  clear  the  southern  seas  of  a 
menace  to  British  trade  and  British  supremacy. 

At  the  time  of  the  battle  between  von  Spee 
and  Cradock,  the  Canopus  was  200  miles  to  the 
southward,  and  after  the  action  she  was  picked 
up  by  the  Glasgow,  both  ships  then  proceeding 
in  company  to  the  Falklands,  wliere  they 
arrived  on  November  8.  On  the  evening  of  that 
day  a  wireless  message  was  received  directing 
them  to  proceed  to  Monte  Video,  and  tlie 
inhabitants  of  the  colony  were  left  with  the 
pleasing  prospect  of  awaiting  the  arrival  of  the 
victorious  German  squadron,  to  which  they 
could  offer  only  such  resistance  as  might  be 
raised  locally.  Before,  however,  the  two  ships 
arrived  at  Monte  Video,  they  received  a  wireless 
message  ordering  them  to  return  to  the  Falk- 
lands and  help  to  defend  the  colony,  which  they 
accordingly  did  ;  and  then,  on  December  7,  to 
the  immense  reUef  of  everyone,  the  Invincible 
and  Inflexible  arrived  from  England,  and  the 
other  ships  from  Brazil. 

At  8  o'clock  on  Tuesday  morning,  Decem- 
ber 8,  it  was  reported  from  the  signal  station  on 
shore  that  the  look-out  on  Sapper  Hill  had 


•%^' 


-*i--|  ^f 


i  ,Kj»i  u  i'notograph  l)V  <i  .\itial  Offuci  frvsint. 

BOATS    FROM    THE    "INFLEXIBLE"    AND    "INVINCIBLE"    PICKING    UP    SURVIVORS 

FROM    THE    "GNEISENAU." 
The  "Inflexible"  standing  by. 


138 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


VICE-ADMIRAL    SIR    F.    C. 
STURDEE. 


DOVETON 


observed  a  fovir-fiinnel  and  a  two-funnel  man- 
of-war  steering  northwards,  and  the  Kent, 
which  was  acting  as  guard  ship  in  Port  William, 
was  at  once  ordered  to  weigh  anchor,  and  a  few 
minutes  later  passed  down  the  harbour  to  a 
station  at  the  entrance,  while  a  general  signal 
was  made  to  raise  steam  for  full  speed.  It  was 
most  important  to  conceal,  if  possible,  from  the 
enemy  the  fact  that  two  battle  cruisers  were 
present,  and  accordingly  those  two  vessels 
raised  steam  with  oil  fuel.  Those  who  have 
seen  the  volumes  of  black  sn:ioke  that  pour  out 
from  the  funnels  of  a  ship  raising  steam  with  oil 
fuel  wiU  reahse  how  black  was  the  cloud  that 
soon  enveloped  the  harbour. 

At  8.20  the  signal  station  reported  another 
colimin  of  smoke  in  sight  to  the  southward, 
and  still  another  column  half  an  hoiu"  later. 
The  Canopus,  which  was  lying  in  Port  Stanley, 
with  the  Glasgow  and  Bristol,  the  other  vessels 
being  in  Port  William,  with  the  Macedonia  at 
anchor  as  look-out  ship  at  the  mouth  of  the 
bay,  reported  at  8.47  that  the  first  two  ships 
were  about  8  miles  off,  and  that  the  smoke 


reported  at  8.20  appeared  to  be  that  of  two 
ships  about  20  miles  off. 

The  subsequent  course  of  events  may  be 
given  in  the  words  of  Admiral  Sturdee'e 
dispatch : 

At  9.20  a.m.  the  two  leading  ships  of  the  enemy 
(Gncisenau  and  Niirnberg),  with  guns  trained  on  the 
\vireless  station,  camo  within  range  of  the  Canopus,  who 
opened  fii-e  at  them  across  the  low  land  at  a  range  of 
11,000  yards.  The  enemy  at  once  hoisted  their  colours 
and  turned  away.  At  this  time  the  masts  and  smoke  of 
the  enemy  were  visible  from  the  upper  bridge  of  the 
Invincible  at  a  range  of  approximately  17  000  yards 
across  the  low  land  to  the  south  of  Port  William. 

A  few  minutes  later  the  two  cruisers  altered  course  to 
port,  as  though  to  close  the  Kent  at  the  entrance  to  the 
harbour  but  about  this  time  it  seems  that  the  Invincible 
and  Inflexible  were  seen  over  the  land,  as  the  enemy  at 
once  altered  course  and  increased  speed  to  join  their 
consorts. 

The  Glasgow  weighed  and  proceeded  at  0.40  a.m.  with 
orders  to  join  the  Kent  and  observe  the  enemy's  move- 
ments. 

At  9.45  a.m.  the  squadron — less  the  Bristol — weighed, 
and  proceeded  out  of  harbour  in  the  following  order  : — 
Carnarvon,  Inflexible,  Invincible,  and  Cornwall.  On 
passing  Cape  Pembroke  Light,  the  five  ships  of  the 
enemy  appeared  clearly  in  sight  to  the  south-east,  hull 
down.  The  visibility  was  at  its  maximum,  the  sea  was 
calm,  with  a  briglit  sun,  a  clear  sky,  and  a  light  breeze 
from  the  north-west. 

At  10.20  a.m.  the  signal  for  a  general  chase  was  made. 
The  battle  cruisers  quickly  passed  ahead  of  the  Car- 
narvon and  overtook  the  Kent.  The  Glasgow  was 
ordered  to  keep  two  miles  from  the  Invincible,  and  the 
Inflexible  was  stationed  on  the  starboard  quarter  of 
the  flagship.  Speed  was  eased  to  20  knots  at  11.15  a.m. 
to  enable  the  other  cruisers  to  get  into  station. 

At  this  time  the  enemy's  fimnels  and  bridges  showed 
just  above  the  horizon. 

Information  was  received  from  the  Bristol  at  11.27 
a.m.  that  three  enemy  ships  had  appeared  off  Port 
Pleasant,  probably  colliers  or  transports.  The  Bristol 
was  therefore  directed  to  take  the  Macedonia  xinder  his 
orders  and  destroy  transports. 

The  enemy  were  still  maintaining  their  distance,  and  I 
decided,  at  12.20  p.m.,  to  attack  with  the  two  battle 
cruisers  and  the  Glasgow. 

At  12.47  p.m.  the  signal  to  "  Open  fire  and  engage  the 
enemy  "  was  made. 

The  Inflexible  opened  fire  at  12.55  p.m.  from  her  fore 
turret  at  the  right-hand  ship  of  the  enemy,  a  light 
cruiser ;  a  few  minutes  later  the  Invincible  opened  fire 
at  the  same  ship. 

The  deliberate  fire  from  a  range  of  16,500  to  15,000 
yards  at  the  right-hand  light  cruiser,  who  was  dropping 
astern,  became  too  threatening,  and  when  a  shell  fell 
close  alongside  her  at  1.20  p.m.  she  (the  Leipzig)  turned 
away,  with  the  Niimberg  and  Dresden  to  the  south-west. 
These  light  cruisers  were  at  once  followed  by  the  Kent, 
Glasgow,  and  Cornwall,  in  accordance  with  my  instruc- 
tions. 

The  action  finally  developed  into  three  separate 
encoimters,  besides  the  subsidiary  one  dealing  with  the 
threatened  landing. 

Action  with  the  armoured  cruisers. — The  fire  of  the 
battle  cruisers  was  directed  on  the  Schamhorst  and 
Gneisenau.  ITie  effect  of  this  was  quickly  seen,  when  at 
1.25  p.m.,  with  the  Schamhorst  leading,  they  turned 
about  7  points  to  port  in  succession  into  line-ahead  and 
opened  fire  at  1.30  p.m.  Shortly  afterwards  speed  was 
eased  to  24  knots,  and  the  battle  cruisers  were  ordered 
to  turn  together,  bringing  them  into  line-ahead,  with  the 
Invincible  leading. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR, 


139 


PART    OF    ADMIRAL    STURDEE'S    FLEET. 
Top:  H.M.S.  "Invincible";  centre  left:  H.M.S.   "Canopus";  centre  right:  H.M.S.  "Glasgow" 

bottom:  H.M.S.   "Inflexible." 


140 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE     WAIL 


[Russell  Soutlisea 


REAR-ADMIRAL    ARCHIBALD    P. 

STODDART, 

(in  the  uniform  of  a  Captain) 

who  flew  his  flag  on  H.M.S.  "  Carnarvon." 

The  range  was  about  13,500  yards  at  the  final  tiim^  and 
increased  until,  at  2  p.m..  it  had  reached  16,450 
yards. 

The  enemy  then  (2.10  p.m.)  turned  away  about   10 
points  to    starboard  and  a  second  chase  ensued,  until 
at  2.45  p.m..  the  battle  cruisers  again  opened  fire  ;  thi* 
caused  the  enemy,  at  2.53  p.m.,  to  turn  into  line-ahead 
to  port  and  open  fire  at  2.55  p.m. 

The  Scharnhorst  caught  fire  forward,  but  not  seriously, 
a!id  her  fire  slackened  perceptibly  ;  the  Gneisenau  was 
badly  hit  by  the  Inflexible. 

At  3.30  p.m.  the  Scharnhorst  led  round  about  10 
points  to  starboard  ;  just  previously  her  fire  had  slackened 
perceptibly,  and  one  shell  had  shot  away  her  third  funnel  ; 
some  guns  were  not  firing,  and  it  would  appear  that  the 
turn  was  dictated  by  a  desire  to  bring  her  starboard  guns 
into  action.  The  effect  of  the  fire  on  the  Scharnhorst 
became  more  and  more  apparent  in  consequence  of 
smoke  from  fires;  and  also  escaping  steam  ;  at  times  a 
shell  would  cause  a  large  hole  to  appear  in  her  side, 
through  which  could  be  seen  a  dull  red  glow  of  flame. 
At  4.4.  p.m.  the  Scharnhorst,  whose  flag  reinained  flying 
to  the  last,  suddenly  listed  heavily  to  port,  and  within  a 
minute  it  became  clear  that  she  was  a  doomed  ship  ; 
for  the  list  increased  very  rapidly  until  she  lay  on  her 
beam  ends,  and  at  1.17  p.m.  she  disappeared. 

The  Gneisenau  passed  on  the  far  side  of  her  late 
flagship,  and  continued  a  determined  but  ineffectual 
effo»i;  to  fight  the  two  battle  cruisers. 

At  5.8  p.m.  the  forward  funnel  was  knocked  over  and 
remained  resting  against  the  second  funnel.  She  was 
evidently  in  .serious  straits,  and  her  fire  slackened  very 
much. 

At  5.15  p.m.  one  of  the  Gnei.senau's  shells  struck  the 
Invincible  ;    this  was  her  last  effective  effort. 

At   5.30  p.m.   she  turned  towards   the  flagship  with  n 


heavy  list  to  starboard,  and  appeared  stopped,  with 
steam  pouring  from  her  escape  pipes  and  smoke  from 
shell  and  fires  rising  everywlierc.  About  this  time  I 
ordered  the  signal  "  Cease  tire,"  hut  before  it  was  hoisted 
ilie  Gneisenau  opened  fire  again,  and  continued  to  fire 
Crom  time  to  time  with  a  single  gun. 

At  5.40  p.m.  the  three  ships  closed  in  on  the  Gneisenau, 
and,  at  this  time,  the  flag  flying  at  her  fore  truck  was 
apparently  hauled  down,  but  the  flag  at  the  peak  con- 
tinued flying. 

At  5.50  p.m.  "  CeEise  fire  "  was  niaile. 

At  6  p.m.  the  Gneisenau  heeled  over  very  suddenly, 
showing  the  men  gathered  on  her  decks  and  then  walking 
on  her  .side  as  she  lay  for  a  minute  on  her  beam  ends 
before  sinking. 

The  prisoners  of  war  from  the  Gneisenau  report  that, 
by  the  time  the  ammunition  was  expended,  some  600 
men  had  been  killed  and  wounded.  The  surviving 
officers  and  men  were  all  ordered  on  deck  and  told  to 
provide  themselves  witli  hammocks  and  any  articles  that 
could  support  them  in  the  water. 

^^'hen  the  ship  capsized  and  sank  there  were  probably 
some  200  unwounded  survivors  in  the  water,  but,  owing 
to  the  shock  of  the  cold  water,  many  were  drowned 
within  sight  of  the  boats  and  ship. 

I'lvery  effort  was  made  to  save  life  as  quickly  as 
possible,  both  by  boats  and  from  the  ships  :  life-buoys 
were  thrown  and  ropes  lowered,  but  only  a  proportion 
could  be  rescued.  The  Invincible  alone  rescued  108 
men,  14  of  whom  were  found  to  be  dead  after  being 
brought  on  board  ;  these  men  were  buried  at  sea  the 
following  day  with  full  military  lionours. 

Actii>n  irith  the  Lir/ht  CrtasiTn. — At  about  1  p.ni..  when 
the  Scharnhorst  and  Gneisenau  turned  to  port  to  engage 
the  Invincible  and  Inflexible,  the  enemy's  light  cruisers 
turned  to  starboard  to  escape  ;  the  Dresden  was  leading 
and  the  Niirnberg  and  Leipzig  followed  on  each 
quarter. 

In  accordance  witli  my  instructions,  the  Glasgow, 
Kent,  and  Cornwall  at  once  went  in  chase  of  these  ships  ; 
the  Carnarvon,  wiiose  speed  was  insullicient  to  overtake 
them,  closed  the  battle  cruisers. 

The  Glasgow  drew  well  ahead  of  the  Cornwall  and 
Kent,  and  at  3  p.m.  .shots  were  exchanged  with  the 
Leipzig  at  12,000  yards.  The  Glasgow's  object  was  to 
endeavour  to  outrange  the  Leipzig  with  her  6-inch  guns 
and  thus  cause  her  to  alter  course  and  give  the  Cornwall 
and  Kent  a  chance  of  coming  into  action. 

At  4.17  p.m.  the  Cornwall  opened  lire,  also  on  the 
Leipzig. 

.At  7.17  p.m.  the  Leipzig  was  on  fire  fore  and  aft,  and 
the  Cornwall  and  Glasgow  ceased  fire. 

The  Leipzig  turned  over  on  her  port  side  and  disap- 
])eared  at  9  p.m.  Seven  ollicors  and  eleven  men  were 
saved. 

At  3.36  p.m.  the  Cornwall  ordered  the  Kent  to  engage 
til?  Xiirnberg,  the  nearest  cruiser  to  her. 

Owing  to  the  excellent  and  strenuous  efforts  of  the 
engine-room  department,  the  Kent  was  able  to  get 
within  range  of  the  Niirnberg  at  5  p.m.  At  6.35  p.m. 
the  Niirnberg  was  on  fire  forward  and  ceased  firing. 
The  Kent  also  ceased  firing  and  closed  to  3,300  yards  ; 
as  the  colours  were  still  observed  to  be  flying  in  the 
Niirnberg,  the  Kent  opened  fire  again.  Fire  was  finally 
stopped  five  minutes  later  on  the  colours  being  haviled 
down,  and  every  preparation  was  made  to  save  life.  The 
Niirnberg  sank  at  7.27  p.m.,  and,  as  she  sank,  a  group 
of  men  were  waving  a  German  ensign  attached  to  a  staff. 
Twelve  men  were  rescued,  but  only  seven  survived. 

The  Kent  had  four  killed  and  twelve  wounded,  mostly 
caused  by  one  shell. 

During  the  time  the  three  cruisers  were  engaged  with 
the  NiirnberK  and  Leipzii.'  the  Dresden,  who  was  beyond 
her  consorts,  effected  lier  escape  owing  to  her  superior 
speed.  The  Glasgow  was  the  only  cruiser  with  sufficient 
speed  to  have  had  any  chance  of  success.  However,  she 
was  fully  employed  in  engaging  the  Leipzig  for  over  an 


THE     TIMES     EISTOBY    OF    THE    WAB. 


141 


ADMIRAL    GRAF    VON    SPEK    AND    HIS    FLlilM. 

Top,  "Scbarnhorst"  :  centre  left,  "Leipzig";   centre  right,   "  Nurnbeni  "  ;  bottom,   "  C^neisenau." 


142 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


lionr  hoforo  either  the  Cornwall  or  Kent  nould  come  up 
and  got  within  range.  During  this  time  the  Dresden 
was  able  to  increase  her  distance  and  get  out  of  sight. 

The  weather  changed  after  4  p.m.,  and  the  visibility 
was  much  reduced  ;  further,  the  sky  was  overcast  and 
cloudy,  thus  assisting  the  Dresden  to  get  away  unob- 
served. 

Action  u-ith  the  Eneniy^s  Transports. — A  report  was 
received  at  11.27  a.m.  from  H.M.S.  Bristol  that  three 
ships  of  the  enemy,  probably  transports  or  colliers,  had 
appeared  off  Port  Pleasant.  The  Bristol  was  ordered  to 
take  the  Macedonia  under  his  orders  and  destroy  the 
transports. 

H.M.S.  Macedonia  reports  that  only  two  ships,  steam- 
ships Baden  and  Santa  Isabel,  were  present  ;  both  ships 
were  sunk  after  the  removal  of  the  crew. 

I  have  pleasure  in  reporting  that  the  officers  and  men 
under  my  orders  carried  out  their  duties  with  admirable 
efficiency  and  coolness,  and  great  credit  is  due  to  the 
Engineer  Officers  of  all  the  ships,  several  of  which 
exceeded  their  normal  full  speed. 

In  connexion  with  Admiral  Sturdee's  tribute 
to  the  work  of  the  engineering  staffs  of  the 
ships,  reference  may  be  made  to  the  expedients 
to  which  the  Kent  was  put  in  her  chase  of  the 
Niirnberg.  She  was  wofully  short  of  fuel, 
and  when  it  was  reported  to  her  captain  that 
the  supply  of  coal  was  beconung  exhausted,  he 
replied,  "  Very  well,  then,  have  a  go  at  the 
boats."  Tlie  order  was  obeyed  ;  the  boats 
were  broken  up,  smeared  with  oil,  and  passed 
into  the  fvu-naces.  After  them  went  the 
wooden  ladders,  the  doors,  and  the  chests  of 
drawers  from  the  officers'  cabins,  and  the  Kent 
steamed  at  24  knots. 

It  was  on  the  Kent,  also,  that  Sergeant 
Charles  Mayes  performed  an  act  that  won  him 
the    Conspicuous    Gallantry    Medal.     A    shell 


burst  and  ignited  some  cordite  charges  in  the 
casemate,  and  a  flash  of  flame  went  down  the 
hoist  into  the  ammunition  passage.  Sergeant 
Mayes  picked  up  a  charge  of  cordite  and  threw 
it  away.  He  then  got  hold  of  a  firehose  and 
flooded  the  compartment,  extinguishing  the 
fire  in  some  empty  shell  bags  which  were 
burning.  The  extinction  of  this  fire  saved  a 
disaster  which  might  have  led  to  the  loss  of 
the  ship. 

The  sinking  of  the  Leipzig  is  described  in  the 
following  extracts  from  a  letter  from  H.M.S. 
Cornwall : 

At  about  9  p.m.  she  loosed  oil  a  rocket  as  a  sign  of 
surrender,  and  so  we  lowered  what  boats  we  could  and 
sent  them  to  her  aid.  I  sliall  never  in  all  my  life  forget 
the  sight  of  that  ship  going  down.  All  the  ship's 
company  had  gathered  on  the  foc's'le,  and  one  or  two 
boats  were  still  being  lowered  when  the  captain  leant  over 
the  side  of  the  bridge  and  said:  ''It's  no  good,  she's 
going."  The  men  in  the  boat  which  was  half  lowered 
stood  up  and  every  face  was  turned  towards  the  blazing 
ship.  You  can't  imagine  what  she  was  like.  It  was 
nearly  dark,  about  9.25  p.m.,  and  the  red  glare  from  the 
flames  lit  up  the  remains  of  what  had  been  the  home  of 
.some  300  human  beings  a  few  hours  before.  As  we  saw 
her  then  she  lay  like  an  inferno  on  the  sea.  She  had  only 
the  veriest  stump  of  her  second  funnel  left.  The  other 
two  had  been  knocked  completely  away.  Her  main- 
mast was  gone,  and  the  upper  half  of  her  foremast. 
Aft  she  w.^s  blazing  like  an  oil  factory,  and  forward  she 
was  also  burning  furiously.  Her  ports  showed  up  like 
faint  red  circles,  and  occasional  spurts  of  steam  and 
sparks  ascended  from  her  waist.  How  any  ship  could 
have  floated  like  it  Heaven  alone  knows,  and  how 
anyone  can  have  lived  through  it  simply  astounds  me. 
Suddenly  she  heeled  to  port  and  her  stump  of  a  foremast 
slowly  dipped  into  the  water  as  she  sank  with  scarcely 
a  ripple  by  the  head.     There  was  no  cheering  or  anything 


A    BATTLESHIP'S    GUNS    IN    ACTION. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


143 


GERMAN    WARSHIP    IN    KIEL   CANAL. 


of  that  sort.  We  just  stood  there  in  absolute  silenne, 
and,  personally,  I  thought  of  the  poor  de\'ils  who  had 
been  chased  for  five  months  only  to  end  like  that. 
There  is  no  doubt  whatsoever  that  they  fought  like 
heroes.  As  for  ourselves  they  hit  us  fair  and  square 
eighteen  times,  and  yet  we  had  not  one  single  casualty. 

The  same  writer  makes  the  following  general 

reflections  on  the  engage aient : 

When  one  remembers  that  the  action  in  the  Pacific 
was  fought  on  November  1,  and  that  the  German  fleet 
did  not  appear  off  the  Falklands  until  December  8,  when 
they  were  free  to  have  come  any  day  previous  to  that, 
and  that  the  British  fleet  had  only  arrived  twenty-four 
hours  earlier  it  does  seem  obvious  that  our  luck  was  in. 
If  we  had  arrived  forty-eight  hours  later  and  they  had 
arrived  twenty-four  hours  sooner,  the  Falkland  Isles 
would  have  been  in  German  hands,  and  hundreds  of  lives 
would  have  been  lost  regaining  them. 

Of  course,  we  had  every  adva  itage  on  our  side  both  in 
weight  of  guns  and  speed  and  armour,  but  even  so  it 
argues  good  management  on  somebody's  part  to  sink 
four  German  ships  with  a  loss  of  over  2,000  Germans 
as  against  a  British  loss  of  seven  or  eight  killed  and  four 
wounded. 

It    cannot    be    denied    that    a    satisfactory 

roundness    would    have    been    added    to    the 

victory   had   all   the   five   German  ships   been 

sunk,  and  on  this  point  the  comments  of  the 

Naval  Correspondent  of  The  Times  may  aptly 

be  quoted  : 

It  is  not  unfair,  nor  does  it  detract  from  the  gallantry 
of  Admiral  Sturdee,  or  the  skilful  manner  in  which  he 
fought  the  action,  to  describe  the  escape  of  the  Dresden 
as  a  regrettable  incident.  It  is  explained  as  being 
partly  due  to  the  fact  that  the  Glasgow,  the  only  light 
cruiser  with  sufficient  speed  to  have  caught  her,  engaged 
the  Leipzig  before  the  Cornwall  or  Kent  came  up,  and 
during  this  time  the  Dresden  was  able  to  increase  her 
distance  and  get  out  of  sight.  Jloreover,  the  weather 
changed  about  4  p.m.,  the  visibility  was  much  reduced, 
and  the  sky  became  overcast  and  cloudy.     Her  escape 


had  two  unfortunate  results.  It  locked  up  several  ships 
for  her  search  which  could  have  been  otherwise  employed, 
and  indirectly  led  to  the  loss  of  a  fine  Japanese  cruiser. 
We  treasure  two  sayings  in  the  Navy,  one  of  Drake's, 
who  said  there  was  time  to  finish  his  game  and  beat  the 
Spaniards  too  ;  and  the  other  of  Nelson's — "  Now,  had 
we  taken  ten  sail,  and  had  allowed  the  eleventh  to  escape 
when  it  had  been  possible  to  have  got  at  her,  I  couki 
never  have  called  it  well  done."  It  seems  quite  likely 
that  Admiral  Sturdee  has  since  regretted  those  brilliant 
hours  in  the  forenoon  when  he  slowed  down  to  enable 
the  other  cruisers  to  get  into  station.  But  this  matter 
apart,  it  was  a  well-fought  action,  giving  every  oppor- 
tunity for  the  display  of  the  admirable  qualities  of  all 
engaged  in  it. 

Some  JNIinob  Operations. 
One  of  the  most  interesting  of  the  minor 
events  of  the  war  at  sea  was  the  bottling  up  and 
subsequent  destruction  of  the  German  light 
cruiser  Konigsberg  in  the  Rufigi  River  on  the 
East  Coast  of  Africa  in  November.  This  vessel 
escaped  from  Dar-es-Salaam  at  the  beginning 
of  the  war  and  did  a  good  deal  of  mischief  among 
shipping,  including  the  shelling  of  H.M.S. 
Pegasus  in  Zanzibar,  when  that  vessel  was  laid 
up  repairing  boilers  and  was  unable  to  replj'^  to 
her  fire.  Chased  by  British  cruisers  she  took 
refuge  in  the  Rufigi  River  and  managed  to  force 
her  way  up  stream  until  she  was  out  of  range. 
As  the  depth  of  water  was  insufficient  to  permit 
of  hor  being  followed,  it  was  decided  to  prevent 
her  escape  by  blocking  the  channel.  A  vessel 
named  the  Newbridge,  with  1,500  tons  of  coal 
in  her,  was  requisitioned  for  this  service,  and  for 
the  trip  down  from  Zanzibar  to  the  river  Iut 
crew  was  replaced  by  naval  officers  and  blue- 


]44 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


SERGEANT    CHARLES    MAYES, 
H.M.S.    "Kent." 

jackets,  though  her  captain,  Captain  Willett, 
remained.  Tlie  operations  were  in  charge  of 
Lieutenant  Lavington  of  the  Pegasus. 

The  preparations   were   made   with  secrecy, 
but  the  Germans  received  notice  of  what  was 


intended  and  got  ready  accordingly.  Tn  order 
to  reach  the  position  where  it  w  as  proposed  to 
sink  her  the  Newbridge  had  to  pass  close  to  a 
small  island  in  the  mouth  of  the  river,  and  on 
this  a  number  of  the  crew  of  the  Konigsberg 
entrenched  themselves  with  Maxims  and  quick- 
firers  landed  from  their  ship.  The  Newbridge 
went  in  under  her  owti  steam,  and  the  Germans 
opened  fire  as  soon  as  she  got  within  range  ;  a 
seaman  was  badly  peppered  with  coal  dust 
owing  to  a  shell  exploding  in  a  coal  bag,  but 
that  was  the  only  casualty.  Coolly  and  dex- 
terously the  ship  was  manoeuvred  into  position 
to  block  the  charmel.  Bow  and  stern  anchors 
were  let  go,  and  water  was  admitted  to  her 
tanks  so  that  she  took  a  hst  to  port,  the  object 
being  to  sink  her  with  her  deck  up  stream,  in 
such  a  way  that  sand  might  be  carried  against 
it  by  the  four-knot  tide  and  promote  the  rapid 
silting  up  of  the  channel.  Then,  when  all  was 
ready,  her  crew  took  to  the  boats  and  exploded 
three  charges  of  guncotton  that  had  been 
placed  in  her  hold  against  the  outer  skin.  She 
sank  rapidly.  Several  casualties  occurred  in  the 
boats  as  they  passed  out  under  a  hot  fire  from 
the  island,  two  bluejackets  being  killed  and 
several  wounded.  The  Duplex,  a  cable  ship 
which  accompanied  the  Newbridge,  had  five 
Lascars  killed  and  a  lieutenant  R.N.R.  severely 


HOISTING    NAVAL    AEROPLANE    ON    BOARD    H.M.S.    "HIBERNIA." 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


145 


GERMAN    BATTLESHIf    SQUADRON. 

wounded.  Almost  immediately  afterwards  the 
Duplex  ran  on  a  reef  ;  she  was  got  off,  but  as 
she  was  found  to  be  badly  damaged,  she  also 
was  sunk  in  the  fairway  to  complete  the  bottling 
up  process.  In  the  meanwhile  the  Konigsberg 
concealed  herself  by  fastening  palm  branches  to 
her  masts  and  funnels.  The  difficulty  that  she 
thus  became  indistinguishable  from  the  sea  was 
overcome  by  an  aeroplane  brought  down  the 
coast  in  the  Kinfaims  Castle.  Flying  inland 
this  machine  marked  the  position  of  the  German 
cruiser  by  smoke  bombs,  enabling  her  to  be 
destroyed  by  bombardment  overland  from  the 
coast  by  the  British  cruisers. 

On  the  other  side  of  Africa,  on  October  26, 
a  French  force  under  Colonel  Mayer,  with  the 
cooperation  of  a  British  naval  and  military 
force,  occupied  Edea,  a  town  on  the  Sanaga 
River,  West  Africa,  and  an  important  station 
on  the  railway  to  Duala.  On  November  13 
preparations  were  completed  for  extensive 
operations  to  the  north  and  north-west  of 
Duala.  After  a  bombardment  by  the  French 
cruiser  Bruix  and  the  Nigeria  Government 
yacht  Ivy,  a  force  of  Royal  Marines  seized 
and  occupied  Victoria,  the  seaport  of  Buea, 
the  seat  of  the  German  Colonial  Government. 
On  the  same  day  a  colunm  advancing  along 
the  Bonaberi  railway  from  Susa  drove  the 
enemy  north  and  occupied  Mujuka,  a  station 
about  50  miles  from  Bonaberi.  Meanwhile 
large  allied  naval  and  military  forces,  advancing 
from  different  points,  proceeded  to  occupy 
Buea.  The  occupation  was  effected  on  Novem- 
ber 15,  the  enemy  being  scattered  in  all  direc- 
tions. A  German  missionary  attempted  to 
blow  up  H.M.S.  Dwarf  with  an  infernal  machine, 
and  when  asked  how  he  found  such  an  action 
compatible  with  his  profession  replied  that  lie 
was  a  soldier  first  and  a  missionary  afterwards. 

About  the  same  time  two  successful  opera- 
tions were  carried  out  in  the  Red  Sea.  In  the 
first  of  these,  against  the  Turkish  garrison  at 


Sheik  Seyd,  Indian  troops  were  engaged, 
assisted  by  H.M.S.  Duke  of  Edinburgh- 
According  to  the  official  accovmt  issued  by  the 
Secretary  of  the  Admiralty  on  November  16, 
the  Turkish  fort  (Turba)  is  situated  on  the 
rocky  heights  to  the  eastward  of  Cape  Bab-el- 
Mandeb,  at  the  southern  entrance  to  the  Red 
Sea,  and  is  close  to  the  boundary  line  between 
Turkish  territory  and  the  Aden  protectorate. 
The  Sheik  Seyd  Peninsula  consists  of  a  group 


IF.  N.  BtrUeU. 
FLIGHT    COMMANDER 
FRANCIS    E.    T.    HEWLETT,    R.N. 


146 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


BRITISH    AEROPLANE    RAID    ON    GUXHAVEN. 


of  rocky  heights  joined  to  the  mainland  by  a 
low  sandy  plain,  the  greater  portion  of  which  is 
covered  at  high  water  by  a  shallow  lagoon. 
The  guns  of  the  fort  command  the  isthmus 
connecting  the  peninsula  A\ith  the  mainland. 
Three  battalions  of  troops  were  landed  in  face 
of  opposition,  but  under  cover  of  fire  from 
H.M.S.  Duke  of  Edinburgh,  which  had  pre- 
viously disabled  Turba  Fort,  and  which  assisted 
during  the  operations.  After  landing,  one 
and  a  half  battalions  of  infantry  attacked  the 
enemy  positions,  and  were  opposed  by  well- 
concealed  artillery  and  infantry  fire.  Wlien 
the  hills  commanding  INIanlieli  were  occupied, 
opposition  weakened,  and  about  200  of  the 
enemy  escaped  on  camels  by  the  isthmus  or 
in  boats  by  sea.  Six  of  the  enemy  were  reported 
killed,  and  the  majority  of  the  remainder 
wounded  and  prisoners.  The  forts  were  occu- 
pied by  the  British  forces,  and  large  amounts 
of  munitions  of  war  and  six  field  guns  captured. 
The  heavy  guns  were  probably  put  out  of 
action  by  the  Duke  of  Edinburgh.  The  British 
casualties  among  the  troops  were  one  officer 
and  fifteen  men  wounded,  and  four  men  killed. 
There  were  no  naval  casualties. 

In  consequence  of  a  report  that  mines  had 
been  sent  to  Akaba  to  be  laid  in  the  Gulf  of 
Akaba,  and  possibly  in  the  Red  Sea,  the 
cruiser    Minerva    was    ordered    to    proceed    to 


Akaba  to  investigate  and  stop  any  such  action. 
According  to  an  account  published  at  Cairo 
on  November  17,  on  arriving  at  Akaba  the 
captain  found  it  occupied  by  a  small  detach- 
ment of  troops.  Negotiations  for  a  surrender 
were  attempted,  but  were  frustrated  by  German 
officers  present.  The  Minerva  was  compelled 
to  open  fire,  but  confined  her  attack  to  the  fort, 
the  post  office,  and  the  Government  buildings. 
Later  a  landing  party  reconnoitred  in  the 
direction  of  Wadi-el-Ithm,  but  encountered  only 
a  few  armed  men,  who  rapidly  disappeared.  The 
patrol  returned  to  the  tov\-n  and  re-embarked, 
after  posting  a  proclamation  inviting  the 
inhabitants  to  return  and  assuring  their  safety. 
The  town  and  wells  were  not  damaged,  and  there 
were  no  British  casualties. 

In  the  Persian  Gulf,  as  already  recorded, 
successful  operations  were  carried  out  on 
November  8  against  Fao,  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Shatt-el-Arab,  by  a  mihtary  force  from 
India  covered  by  H.M.S.  Odin  (Commander 
Cathcart  P.  Wason),  the  armed  launch  Sirdar, 
a  force  of  marines  with  a  ISIaxim  gun  party, 
and  a  boat  from  the  Ocean.  The  gims  of  the 
enemy  were  silenced  after  an  hour's  resistance, 
and  the  town  was  occupied  by  the  troops  and 
the  naval  brigade.  There  were  no  naval 
casualties. 

At  the  end  of  October  the  Tiu-kish  Fleet,  at 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


147 


the  instigation  of  its  German  masters,  started 
bombarding  undefended  coast  towns  in  the 
Black  Sea.  The  Goeben  bombarded  Sebas- 
topol  and  threw  116  shells  into  the  town  on 
November  1,  and  in  answer  a  combined 
British  and  French  squadron  bombarded 
the  Dardanelles  forts  at  long  range  at 
daybreak  on  November  3.  The  forts  rejjlied, 
but  the  Allies  suffered  no  loss,  only  one  pro- 
jectile falling  alongside.  A  large  explosion, 
accompanied  by  volvunes  of  black  smoke, 
occurred  at  Helles  fort,  but  the  amount  of 
material  damage  done  could  not  be  estimated. 
Probably  the  intention  of  the  attack  was  not 
so  much  to  cause  damage  as  to  ascertain  the 
range  of  the  guns  in  the  forts. 

Nearly  three  weeks  later  the  Goeben  and 
the  Breslau  were  engaged  by  the  Russian  Fleet 
in  the  Black  Sea.  According  to  the  statement 
of  the  Naval  General  Staff  at  Petrograd,  about 
noon  on  November  18,  when  the  Russian 
battleship  division  was  retiu"ning  from  a  cruise 
along  the  Anatolian  coast  and  was  abrea.st 
of  Sebastopol,  it  sighted,  25  miles  off  the 
Chersonese  lightship,  the  Goeben  and  the 
Breslau.  The  ships  immediately  took  battle 
formation,  and  holding  a  course  which  placed 
th«  enemy  to  starboard,  opened  fire  at  a  range 
of  forty  cables  (i.e.,  8,000  yards).  The  first 
salvo  of  the  12-inch  guns  of  the  flagship  Evstaffi 
hit  the  Goeben,  bursting  on  the  centre  of  her 
freeboard  and  causing  a  fire  on  board.  The  other 
Russian  ships  then  opened  fu-e,  and  inade 
excellent  practice,  a  whole  series  of  explosions 
being  noticeable  on  the  Goeben's  hull.  After 
some  delay  the  Goeben  opened  fire  with  salvos 
from  her  big  gims,  which  she  concentrated  on 
the  Russian  flagship.  The  battle  lasted  14 
minutes  and  then  the  Goeben  swiftly  changed 
course,    and,    thanks    to    her    superior  speed. 


IRusseil,  Southsea. 

LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER 

NORMAN    D.    HOLBRCOK,    V.C., 

of  Submarine  B  11, 

disappeared  in  the  fog.  The  Breslau,  which 
had  taken  no  part  in  the  action,  remained  in 
the  offing.  Only  slight  damage  was  suffered 
by  the  Evstaffi.  The  Russian  casualties  were 
four  officers  and  24  men  killed  and  wounded. 

The  strength  of  the  Russian  squadron  on  this 
occasion  is  not  stated,  but  in  anj'  case  the 
Goeben  was  nearly  twice  the  displacement  of 


SUBMARINE    B  11, 
Which  torpedoed  the  Turkish  Battleship  "  Messudiyeh  "  in  fhe  Dardanelles. 


148 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


CLEARING    FOR    ACTION. 

All  spare  wood  and  furniture  is  thrown  overboard 
or  sent  ashore. 


the  Russian  flagship.  Also,  she  was  apparently 
caught  napping,  as  the  Russian,  who  kept  the 
better  look-out,  got  in  the  first  blow.  At  the 
range  indicated  the  Goeben's  guns  should  have 
made  a  smashing  reply,  but  they  evidently 
failed  to  do  so,  while  the  shells  of  her  antagonists 
seem  to  have  done  her  considerable  damage. 
Subsequently  she  appeared  off  Batiun,  but  from 
the  fact  that  she  was  quickly  driven  off  by  the 
shore  batteries  it  may  be  inferred  that  her  big 
guns  had  not  all  been  repaired,  or  replaced, 
since  the  engagement  near  Sebastopol. 

On  December  13  the  British  svibmarine  Bll, 
Lieutenant-Commander  Norman  D.  Holbrook, 
entered  the  Dardanelles,  and,  diving  under  five 
rows  of  mines,  torpedoed  the  Turkish  battleship 
Messudiyeh,  which  was  guarding  the  minefield. 
Although  pursued  by  gunfire  and  torpedo 
boats,  Bll  retvuTied  safely,  after  being  sub- 
merged on  one  occasion  for  nine  hours.     When 


last  seen  the  Messudiyeh  was  sinking  by  the 
stem.  What  was  not  known  at  the  time,  and 
what  is  nevertheless  the  fact,  is  that  during  the 
operations  the  compass  of  Bll  went  wrong, 
and  Lieutenant  Holbrook  had  to  find  his  way 
out  of  the  Dardanelles  without  it ;  at  one  time 
his  frail  vessel  was  actually  bumping  on  the 
bottom.  All  his  brother  officers  concur  in 
regarding  this  as  one  of  the  finest  individual  feats 
performed  during  the  war.  The  underwater 
navigation  of  the  Dardanelles  is  most  perilous 
and  difficult  at  all  times,  owing  to  the  swift 
currents  which  never  cease  racing  through  the 
Straits,  and  when,  in  addition  to  the  whirl- 
pools and  eddies  caused  by  these  currents 
striking  projections  and  points,  the  presence 
of  five  rows  of  mines  is  considered,  such  a  feat 
would  seem  quite  impossible  of  accomplishment 
were  it  not  for  the  hard  and  undeniable  fact 
that  it  was  accomplished.  That  the  tor- 
pedoed battleship  was  "  guarding  the  mine- 
field "  adds  a  touch  of  comedy  to  the  proceed- 
ings that  must  have  been  singularlj^  gratifying 
to  Lieutenant  Holbrook  and  his  gallant  com- 
panions who  crept  along  the  sea  floor  with  him 
on  that  eventful  day.  The  London  Gazette  of 
December  21  annoiuiced  that  the  King  had 
approved  of  the  grant  of  the  Victoria  Cross  to 
Lieutenant  Norman  Douglas  Holbrook ;  his 
second  in  command,  liieutenant  Sydney  Thorn- 
hill  Winn,  being  made  a  Companion  of  the 
Distinguished  Service  Order  for  his  shai'e  in 
the  achievement. 

British  Losses  in^  Home  Waters. 

About  this  period  several  na\al  losses  in 
home  waters  have  to  be  chronicled.  On  the 
last  day  of  October  the  old  cruiser  Hermes, 
Captain  C.  R.  Lambe,  was  sunk  in  the  Straits 
of  Dover  by  a  German  submarine  as  she  was 
retvurning  from  Dunkirk.  She  was  struck  by 
two  torpedoes  and  hmnediately  began  to  settle 
down.  The  S.O.S.  signal  was  made^  and  two 
destroyers  and  the  cross-Channel  steamer 
Invicta  came  to  the  rescue.  She  remained 
afloat  for  about  two  hours  after  being  struck 
and  then  foimdered,  her  captain  being  the  last 
man  to  leave  her.  About  44  of  her  crew  were 
lost,  400  being  saved  and  landed  at  Dover 
On  November  11  the  torpedo -gunboat  Niger,. 
Lieutenant -Commander  A.  P.  Moore,  was  tor- 
pedoed by  a  submarine  m  the  Downs  and 
foimdered.  There  was  no  loss  of  life,  and. 
curiously  enough,  the  occivrrence  was  witnessed 
by  thousands  of  people  at  Deal,  who  had  assem- 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


149 


bled  on  the  beach  on  hearing  the  sound  of  heavy 
firing  out  to  sea.  About  noon  the  soiuid  of  an 
explosion  was  heard  and  volumes  of  black  smoke 
wero  seen  rising  from  the  Niger,  which  was 
lying  two  miles  from  the  shore  opposite  to  the 
pier  iiead.  A  stiff  breeze  was  blowing  with  a 
considerable  sea.  Instantly  the  Deal  and 
Kingsdown  lifeboats  piit  out.  together  with  a 
swarm  of  boats  from  the  shore,  and  by  these 
the  crew  were  rescued.  The  Niger  sank  about 
twenty  minutes  after  the  explosion. 

On  November  24  the  Secretary  of  the 
Admiralty  reported  the  sinking  of  the  German 
submarine  U18  on  the  northern  coast  of  Scot- 
land. At  12.20  on  the  morning  of  the  pre- 
ceding day  a  British  patrolling  vessel  reported 
having  rammed  her,  but  she  was  not  sighted 
again  \intil  1.20,  when  she  was  seen  on  the 
surface,  crew  on  deck,  and  flying  a  white 
flag.  Shortly  afterwards  she  foundered  just 
as  the  destroyer  Garry  came  alongside  and 
rescued  tlu'ee  officers  and  23  of  her  crew,  only 
one  being  drowned.  The  survivors  were  landed 
and  interned  in  Edinburgh  Castle. 

A  terrible  disaster  occurred  at  Sheerness  on 
November  26,  the  Bulwark,  a  battleship  of 
15,000  tons,  being  blown  up  and  destroyed, 
with  the  loss  of  all  her  company  of  some 
750  officers  and  men,  save  fourteen. 
Many  theories  were  advanced  to  explain  the 
blowing  up  of  the  magazines  of  the  ship,  but 
it  remained  after  all  an  impenetrable  mystery. 
Lieutenant  Benjamin  George  Carroll,  assistant 


GERMAN    WARSHIP    COALING    AT    SEA. 

coaling  officer  at  Sheerness,  in  his  evidence  at 
the  coroner's  inquest,  said  that  he  was  passing 
down  the  Med  way  at  7. 50  a.m.  on  the  morning  ol 


GUNS    OF    H.M.S.    "NEW    ZEALAND." 


150 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


■2? 

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THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


151 


the  26th .  The  Bulwark  was  then  lying  in  Rithole 
Reach,  and  there  was  nothing  alongside  her. 
Just  as  he  was  noticing  a  signal  indicating  the 
number  of  tons  of  coal  on  board  her  he  saw  a 
spurt  of  flame  abaft  the  after  barbette.  Then 
the  whole  volume  of  flame  seemed  to  rush 
towards  the  after  funnel.  The  whole  interior 
of  the  ship  seemed  to  be  blown  into  the  air,  and 
everything  seemed  alight.  He  observed  no 
disturbance  of  the  water.  It  was  quite  calm, 
and  there  was  no  tide.  He  at  once  turned  his 
boat  back  to  render  assistance,  and  was  able 
to  pick  up  two  men,  including  an  officer.  He 
*  was  convinced  that  there  was  an  internal 
explosion.  The  12-inch  charges  were  in  brass 
cases,  and  he  did  not  see  how  possibly  the 
throwing  away  of  cigarette  ends  could  have 
anything  to  do  with  the  explosions.  The 
Admiralty  Court  of  Inquiry  which  made  an 
exhaustive  and  scientific  research  into  the 
causes  of  the  disaster,  could  not  account  for 
it  by  any  known  theory  ;  one  of  their  witnesses. 
Commander  Wilton,  said  that  they  had  been 
able  to  trace  every  cartridge  on  board,  and  there 
was  no  evidence  of  loose  cordite.  The  only 
definite  conclusion  arrived  at  was  that  the 
ignition  which  had  taken  place  was  internal 
and  not  external. 

The  first  day  of  the  New  Year  was  marked 
by  the  loss  of  the  Formidable,  a  battleship  of 
15,000  tons,  which  was  torpedoed  and  sunk 
in  the  Channel.  Completed  in  1901,  she  was 
virtually  a  sister-ship  to  the  Bulwark,  and 
although  pre -Dreadnought  battleships  are  now 
obsolescent  they  have  still  a  considerable 
fighting  value,  and  it  would  be  folly  to  under- 
estimate the  loss  that  her  destruction  meant  to 
the  Fleet.  She  went  down  between  3  and  3.30 
a.m.,  and  of  her  complement  of  nearly  800 
only  201  were  saved.  After  she  was  struck 
everything  was  done  that  was  possible  in  the 
circumstances,  and  that  high  standard  of 
discipline  which  never  fails  in  the  Navy  in  the 
face  of  serious  emergency  was  fully  maintained. 
Captain  Loxley  was  on  the  bridge  directing 
operations  to  the  last  and  went  down  with  the 
ship.  Of  the  four  boats  launched,  one,  a  barge, 
capsized,  and  several  men  were  thrown  into 
the  sea  ;  the  second,  also  a  barge,  got  away 
with  about  seventy  men,  who  were  picked  up 
by  a  light  cruiser  ;  the  third,  a  pinnace  with 
some  sixty  men,  reached  the  shore  at  I^iymo 
Regis,  and  the  fourth,  a  cutter  with  seventy 
men,  after  being  in  a  rough  sea  for  about  eleven 
hours,    was    rescued    off   Berry    Head    by    the 


[RusseU. 

REAR-ADMIRAL  THE  HON.  H.  L.  HOOD. 

trawler  Providence  and  brought  into  Brixham. 
The  splendid  behaviour  of  the  master  of  this 
trawler,  William  Pillar,  and  his  crew,  was  the 
one  bright  spot  in  the  tragedy.  They  were 
some  fifteen  miles  from  Berry  Head,  and 
rvmning  before  a  gale  to  shelter  in  Brixham 
when  they  were  amazed  to  see  an  open  boat 
adrift.  This  tvirned  out  to  be  the  cutter  of  the 
Formidable.  Only  a  seaman  can  apprcciato 
the  difficulties  with  which  Pillar  was  now 
confronted.  He  had,  in  heavy  weather,  to 
take  in  another  reef  in  his  mainsail  and  to  hoist 
a  storm  jib ;  otherwise  he  could  not  have 
brought  his  vessel  to  the  wind  and  so  manoeu- 
vred as  to  get  into  touch  with  the  cutter.  By 
superb  handling  and  entire  disregard  of  danger, 
he  actually  managed  to  gybe  his  vessel  in  his 
endeavour  to  establish  communication  with  the 
cutter  (this  means  passing  stern  to  the  wind 
from  one  tack  to  the  other,  and  is  most  dan- 
gerous in  heavy  weather),  and  at  last  a  rope 
was  passed  and  made  fast.  One  by  one  the 
mariners  of  the  Formidable  leapt  from  the 
open  boat  to  the  smack,  and  when  the  transfer 
was  at  last  accomplished  the  boat  was  cast 
off  and  the  Providence  made  for  Brixham. 
The  officer  of  the  cutter  commended  the  gallant 
seamanship  of  the  Brixham  fishermen,  wliich  ho 
describctl  as  being  beyond  all  praise,  and  tlie 
King,  when  he  pinned  the  silver  medal  for 
gallantry  on  the  breast  of  the  skippi-r,  I'iiliu-, 
at  Buckingham  I'alace,  addressed  liini  and  his 
crew  in  the  following  words  :    "  I  congratulate 


152 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


THE    "BLUGHER." 


you  most  heartily  upon  youi"  gallant  and  heroic 
conduct.  It  is  indeed  a  gi'eat  feat  to  have 
saved  seventy-one  lives.  I  realize  how  diffi- 
cult your  task  must  have  been  because  I  know 
myself  how  arduous  it  is  to  gybe  a  vessel  in  a 
heavy  gale."  This  was  not  only  the  King  of 
England  speaking  to  a  Brixham  fisherman, 
but  also  one  seaman  speaking  to  another ; 
and  to  have  been  thus  addressed  must  have 
enhanced  the  value  of  their  well-earned  medals 
to  the  crew  of  the  Providence.  An  Admiralty 
award  of  £250  was  made  to  Pillar,  £100  each  to 
the  mate  and  seaman,  and  £50  to  the  boy. 

There  was  at  first  some  doubt  whether  the 
loss  of  the  Formidable  was  due  to  a  submarine 
or  to  a  mine,  but  subsequently  the  Admiralty 


came  to  the  definite  opinion  that  she  was  sunk 
by  two  torpedoes  fired  from  a  submarine.  In 
this  connexion  Lord  Charles  Beresf  ord  remarked 
in  the  House  of  Commons  on  February  15  that : 

the  submarine  was  considerably  overrated  if  proper 
precaution  was  taken  against  it,  but  if  such  precaution 
was  not  taken,  it  was  a  most  fatal  weapon  in  naval 
warfare.  It  was  problematical  whether  a  submarine 
would  ever  hit  a  ship  going  at  speed  ;  certainly,  it  would 
never  hit  ships  accompanied  by  their  proper  quota  of 
destroyers  and  small  craft.  These  were  the  two  safe- 
guards. He  wanted  to  know  why  the  squadron,  of  which 
the  Formidable  formed  part,  disposed  of  them.  It  was 
common  knowledge  where  she  was  going,  and  what  she 
was  going  to  do.  She  went  out  and  then  sent  back  the 
destroyers,  which  were  her  first  defence.  Afterwards, 
when  she  was  farther  out  in  the  Channel,  in  an  area 
known  to  be  infested  with  submarines,  she  slackened 
speed.  The  Admiral  would  not  have  done  that  if  the 
Admiralty  had   given   definite   orders   after   the   loss   of 


THE    "BLUGHER"    SINKING. 


[From  an  aaual  photograph. 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


153 


the  three  cruisers  (Aboukir,  Cressy,  and  Hogue)  that  no 
ship  should  proceed  except  at  speed  and  with  her 
screens. 

Raids  and  Cotjnter-Raids. 

We  now  come  to  the  series  of  raids  made  on 
our  East  Coast  by  the  German  Navy.  The 
first,  on  November  3,  was  directed  against  Yar- 
mouth. This  place  has  been  persistently 
described  in  the  German  Press  as  "  the  fortified 
port  of  Yarmouth " — in  order,  it  is  to  be 
imagined,  that  the  subjects  of  the  Kaiser  may 
think  that  special  daring  was  necessary  to 
attack  so  redoubtable  a  fortress.  The  story 
of  this  raid  has  already  been  dealt  with 
(Vol.  II.,  pp.  358-362)  ;  there  is,  therefore, 
no  occasion  to  make  more  than  passing  reference 
to  it  here.  In  it  eight  ships  were  employed, 
including  the  three  battle  cruisers,  Seydlitz, 
Moltke,  and  Von  der  Tann,  the  armoured 
cruisers  Bliicher  and  Yorck,  and  the  cruisers 
Kolberg,  Graudenz,  and  Strassburg.  They 
bombarded  Yarmouth  at  such  long  range 
that  they  did  no  damage  ;  they  even  failed 
to  do  any  serious  harm  to  the  ancient  torpedo 
gunboat  Halcyon,  though  she  should  un- 
doubtedly have  been  sunk.  They  then  turned 
and  fled,  dropping  mines  as  they  went.  The 
submarine  Dll  which  started  in  pursuit, 
struck  on  one  of  these  and  was  lost  with  all 
her  crew  save  two.  Two  fishing  boats  also 
struck  on  mines  and  were  lost  with  fifteen 
hands.  As  the  cruisers  returned  to  their  own 
waters  the  Yorck  struck  on  a  mine  and  was  lost, 
carrying  with  her  some  300  men. 

The  second  raid,  on  December  16,  was  made 
on  Scarborough,  Whitby,  and  the  Hartlepools. 
As  thiS;  too,  has  been  exhaustively  treated  in 
the  chapter  above  referred  to,  there  is  no 
need  to  do  more  than  record  it  here, 
and  to  note  the  horror  which  this  cowardly 
attack  caused  not  only  in  England,  but  through- 
out the  whole  civilized  world.  Fog  unfor- 
tunately prevented  a  British  squadron  from 
coming  in  contact  with  the  marauders,  but  a 
reply  was  delivered  on  Christmas  morning,  when 
a  combined  attack  was  made  on  the  German 
warships  lying  in  Cuxhaven  harbour  by  seven 
seaplanes  piloted  by  Flight -Commanders 
Douglas  A.  Oliver,  Francis  E.  T.  Hewlett, 
Robert  P.  Ross,  and  Cecil  F.  Milner,  Flight- 
lieutenants  Arnold  J.  Miley,  and  Charles  H.  K. 
Edmonds,  and  Flight  Sub -lieutenant  Vivian 
Gaskell  Blackbvu-n.  The  attack  was  delivered 
at  daylight,  starting  from  a  point  in  the  vicinity 
of  Heligoland.  The  seaplanes  were  escorted 
by  a  light  cruiser  and  destroyer  force,  together 


[Symonds,  Portsmouth. 

CAPTAIN    A.    S.    M.    CHATFIELD, 
of  H.M.S.  "Lion." 

with  submarines.  As  soon  as  these  ships  were 
seen  by  the  Germans  from  Heligoland,  two 
Zeppelins,  three  or  four  seaplanes  and  several 
submarines  attacked  them.  It  was  necessary 
for  the  British  ships  to  remain  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood in  order  to  pick  up  the  returning 
airmen,  and  a  novel  combat  ensued  between 
the  most  modern  cruisers  on  the  one  hand  and 
the  enemy  aircraft  and  submarines  on  the  other. 
By  swift  manoeuvring  the  enemy  submarines 
were  avoided,  and  the  two  Zeppelins  were 
easily  put  to  flight  by  the  guns  of  the  Un- 
daimted  and  Arethusa.  The  enemy  seaplanes 
succeeded  in  dropping  their  bombs  near  our 
ships,  though  without  hitting  any.  The  Bi'ititjh 
ships  remained  for  tliree  hours  off  the  enemy 
coast  without  being  molested  by  any  siu-face 
vessels,  and  safely  re-embarked  three  out  of 
the  seven  airmen.  Three  more  pilots  were 
picked  up  later,  according  to  arrangement,  by 
the  British  submarines  which  were  standing  by, 
their  machines  being  sunl<.  Flight-Commander 
Hewlett  was  missing  at  the  end  of  the  day's 
operations,  but  he  eventually  returned  in 
safety,  having  been  picked  up  by  a  Dutch 
fishing  vessel.  What  damage  was  done  is  not 
known  ;  but  the  moral  effect  was  great.  Cux- 
haven, unlike  Yarmouth  and  Scarborough,  is 
very  strongly  fortified ;  and  shoals  make  it 
impossible  for  a  ship  to  pass  up  the  Elbe 
without  coming  within  the  range  of  the  giuis 


154 


THE    TIMES    HISTOllY    OF    THE    WAli. 


[Ritisell,  Southsea. 

CAPTAIN    LIONEL    HALSEY, 
of  H.M.S.  "  New  Zealand." 

mounted  there.  It  will  be  noticed  that  the 
much-vaunted  Zeppelins  were  put  to  flight 
almost  at  once. 

In  connexion  with  this  counter-raid  on 
Cuxhaven  reference  may  be  made  to  the  sup- 
port that  was  lent  by  British  warships  at  sea 
to  the  land  forces  of  the  Allies  on  the  coast  of 
Belgium.  When,  established  on  the  coast,  the 
Germans  proceeded  to  make  their  plans  for  the 
capture  of  Calais,  as  a  preliminary  for  the 
destruction  of  ova  Fleet  and  the  invasion  of 
our  country,  thej^  did  not  reckon  on  the  Britisli 
Navy  taking  a  hand  in  the  game.  As  was 
briefly  recorded  in  a  previous  chapter,  a  naval 
flotilla,  including  the  three  monitors  which 
at  the  outbreak  of  war  were  being  built  in 
British  yards  for  Brazil,  and  mounting  a  large 
number  of  powerful  long-range  guns,  was 
brought  into  action  off  the  Belgian  coast  in 
October  in  support  of  the  left  flank  of  the 
Belgian  Army.  Observation  was  arranged 
from  the  shore  by  means  of  naval  balloons, 
and  the  squadron  under  Rear-Admiral  Hood 
was  able  to  render  the  neighbourhood  of  Nieu- 
port  and  Westende  a  "  perfect  hell  of  fire  and 
smoke,"  bombarding  the  German  right  and 
enfilading  their  lines.  Although  the  enemy 
replied  with  heavy  guns  and  sought  to  damage 
the  attacking  ships  with  submarines,  destroyers, 
and   mines,   our   vessels  received   only   trifling 


structural  injury,  and  our  casualties  throughout 
were  sligiit.  This  bombardment  was  continued 
intermittently  for  weeks.  On  November  23 
all  points  of  military  significance  at  Zeebrugge 
were  bombarded,  and  though  the  official  report 
stated  that  the  amount  of  damage  done  was 
imknown,  there  was  reason  to  believe  that,  at 
least  for  the  time  being,  the  port  was  rendered 
useless  as  a  naval  base. 

There  is  a  curious  resemblance  between 
tlie  work  thus  done  by  Admiral  Hood  in  the 
twentieth  century  and  that  accomplished  by 
Admiral  Rodney  in  the  (;ighteenth.  On  July  3, 
1759,  Rodney  arrived  off  Havre  which  was  full 
of  stores,  fodder,  provisions,  field  guns,  ammu- 
nition trains,  horses,  harness,  and  small  arms, 
ready  for  embarcation  in  himdreds  of  trans- 
ports and  flat-bottomed  boats  for  the  invasion 
of  England  by  the  army  under  the  Due  d'Aguil- 
lon.  Rodney  was  provided  with  a  niunber  of 
"  bomb  vessels,"  which  threw  bombs  guaranteed 
to  set  fire  to  anything  inflammable  with  which 
they  came  into  contact.  Like  om*  modern 
Admiral,  he  was  yoimg  and  full  of  energy ; 
under  him  the  men  worked  so  splendidly  that 
in  one  night  they  had  all  their  bomb  vessels  in 
position,  and  the  next  day  the  rain  of  bombs 
set  fire  to  and  consumed  everything  which 
would  burn,  including  the  transports  and  flat 


fRiissi!.  Soiiilisra. 

REAR-ADMIRAL  OSMOND  DE  B.  BROCK 

(in  the  uniform  of  a  Captain), 

of  H.M.S.  "Princess  Royal." 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


155 


^ 


H.M.S.    "LION," 
Flagship  of  Sir  David  Beatty. 


boats.     It  was  said  that  it  took  Havre  over  a 
century  to  recover  from  Rodney's  attack. 

The  North  Sea  Action. 

The  third  German  raid  took  place  on 
January  24,  or  rather  it  should  be  said 
was  attempted,  for  the  attack  was  foiled 
by  a  British  patrolling  squadron  under  Vice- 
Admiral  Sir  David  Beatty.  Presumably  the 
intention  was  to  repeat  the  achievement  of 
December  16,  wliich  caused  so  much  delight  in 
Germany,  and  it  has  been  suggested  that  the 
objective  was  the  Tyne,  or  even  the  Firth  of 
Forth.  In  Germany  it  was  spoken  of  as  "  an 
advance  in  the  North  Sea,"  as  if  it  were  nothing 
but  a  reconnoitring  excursion. 

A  British  squadron  of  battle  cruisers  and 
light  cruisers  with  destroyer  flotillas  was 
patrolling  the  North  Sea  on  Sunday  morning, 
January  24,  1915,  when  at  7.25  a.m.  the  flash 
of  guns  was  observed  to  the  south-south-east, 
and  shortly  afterwards  the  light  cruiser  Aurora 
reported  to  Vice-Admiral  Sir  David  Beatty 
that  she  was  engaged  with  enemy  ships.  Ho 
at  once  altered  the  course  of  his  ships  to  south- 
south-east,  increased  his  speed  to  twenty-two 
knots,  and  ordered  the  light  cruisers  and 
destroyer  flotillas  to  chase  south-south-east  in 
order  to  get  into  touch  with  the  enemy  and 
report  theiij  movements.  Almost  immediately 
reports  followed  from  the  Southampton, 
-Arethusa  and  Aurora,  wliich  had  anticipated 
these  instructions,  that  the  enemy  ships  con- 
sisted of  three  battle  cruisers,  the  Bliicher,  six 
light  cruisers,  and  a  number  of  destroj'ers.  The 
British    fleet    included    the    battleships    Lion, 


Tiger,     Princess     Royal,     New     Zealand     and 

Indomitable  ;    the  light  cruisers  Southampton, 

Nottingham,  Birmingham,  Lowestoft,  Arethusa, 

Aurora  and  Undaunted,  and  destroyer  flotillas, 

the  last  being  under  Commodore  Reginald  Y. 

Tyrwhitt.     The  following  are  particulars  of  the 

large  ships  engaged  on  both  sides  : 

British. 
Lion. — Battle  cruiser,  launched  at  Devonport   1910, 
completed    1912.     Displacement,    26,350   tons  ;     length, 
660  ft.  ;   beam,  88J  ft.  ;   draught,  28  ft.  ;   i.h.p.,  75,685  ; 


CAPTAIN    HENRY    B. 
of  H.M.S.  "Tiger. 


PELLY, 


15G 


THt:    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


'J 


LlJ 

Q 
Z 

o 


C/D 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


157 


speed,      28-5      knots.      Artnament :       Eight      13-5-inch 
sixteen  4-inch,  four  3-pounders,  and  five  raaclnne  guns, 
and  two  torpedo  tubes.     Con\plement,  980. 

Tiger. — Battle  cruiser,  launched  at  Clydebank  1913. 
Displacement.  28,000  tons  ;  length,  660  ft.  ;  beam, 
POJ  ft.;  draught,  28^  ft.;  i.h.p.,  100  000;  speed,  28 
knots.  Armament :  Eight  13-.5-inch  and  twelve  6-inch 
gims.     These  particulars  are  unoflficial. 

Princess  Royal. — Battle  cruiser,  sister  ship  of  the 
Lion,  launched  at  Barrow  1911  completed  1912.  Dis- 
placement, 26,3.')0  tons  ;  length.  660  ft.  ;  beam,  88|  ft.  ; 
draught,  28  ft.:  i.h.p.,  76,510;  speed,  28-5  knots. 
Armament  :  eight  13-5-inch,  sixteen  4-inch,  four 
3-pounder,  and  five  machine  guns.     Complement,   980. 

New  Zeaxand. — Battle  cruiser,  bviilt  at  Govan  at  the 
charge  of  the  New  Zealand  Government,  launched  1911, 
completed  1912.  Displacement,  18,800  tons  ;  length, 
555  ft.  ;  beam,  80  ft.  ;  draught,  26|  ft.  ;  i.h.p.,  46,894  ; 
speed,  25  knots.  Armament :  Eight  12-inch,  sixteen 
4-inch,  four  3-pounder.  and  five  machine  guns  and  two 
torpedo  tubes.     Complement,  780. 

Indomitable. — Battle  cruiser,  sister  ship  of  the  In- 
vincible and  Inflexible,  which  took  part  in  the  action 
offi  the  Falkland  Islands.  Launched  at  Govan  1907, 
completed  1908.  Displacement,  17,250  ;  length,  530  ft.  ; 
beam,  78|  ft.;    draught,  26  ft.;    i.h.p.,  41,000;    speed, 

26  knots.     Armament  :     Plight    12-inch,   sixteen   4-inch, 
and  five  machine  gions  and  five  torpedo  tubes.     Com 
plement,  780. 

German. 

Blucher. — Armouied  cruiser,  launched  at  Kiel  1908, 
completed  1910.  Displacement,  15,550  tons;  length, 
4J9ft.  ;  beam,  80Jft.  ;  draught,  26-2  ft.  ;  i.h.p.,  40,000  ; 
speed,  25-3  knots.  Armament :  Twelve  8-2-inch,  eight 
5-9-inch,  and  sixteen  3-4-inch  guns,  and  four  torpedo 
tubes. 

MoLTKE. — Battle  cruiser,  sister  ship  of  the  Goeben, 
launched  at  Hamburg  1910,  completed  1911.  Displace- 
ment, 22,640  tons  ;  length,  610J  ft.  ;  beam,  96  ft.  ; 
draught,  27  ft.  ;  i.h.p.,  86,900 ;  speed,  28-4  knots. 
Armament:  Ten  11-inch,  twelve  5-9-inch,  and  twelve 
3-4-inch  guns,  and  four  torpedo  tubes.  Complement, 
1,013. 

Seydlitz. — Battle  cruiser,  laimched  at  Hamburg  1912, 
completed  1913.  Displacement,  24,640  tons ;  length. 
656  ft.  ;  beam.  93i  ft.  ;  draught,  27  ft.  ;  i.h.p.,  65,000  ; 
speed,  26-2  knots  (best  recent  speed,  29  knots).  Arma- 
ment :  ten  11-inch,  twelve  5-9-inch,  and-twelve  3-4-inch 
guns,  and  four  torpedo  tubes.     Complement,  1,108. 

DERFFLrN^GER. — Battle  cruiser,  launched  at  Hamburg 
1913.  Displacement,  28,000  tons;  length,  700  ft.; 
beam.  96  ft.  ;    draught,  27  ft.  ;    i.h.p.,   100,000  ;    speed, 

27  knots.  Armament :  Eight  12-inch,  twelve  5-9-inch, 
and  twelve  3-4-Lnch  guns,  and  four  torpedo  tubes.  All 
the  turrets  of  the  Derflfiinger  are  stated  to  be  in  the  centre 
line,  and  not  superimposed  ;  otherwise  the  vessel  has 
much  the  same  outline  as  the  Seydlitz. 

When  the  enemy  ships  were  first  seen  they 
were  steering  north-west,  but  they  quickly 
changed  their  course  to  south-east.  Tlie 
British  battle  cruisers,  working  up  to  their  full 
speed,  steered  to  the  southward.  At  7.30  they 
sighted  the  enemy  on  the  port  bow  about  14 
miles  distant  and  steaming  fast,  and  as  the 
prompt  reports  thej'  had  received  had  enabled 
them  to  attain  a  position  on  the  enemy's 
quarter,  they  altered  their  course  to  south-east 
parallel  with  that  of  their  quarry,  and  settled 
down  to  a  long  stem  chase.  The  speed  was 
gradually  increa.sed  to  28'5  knots,  and  thanks 
to  the  efforts  of  the  engineer  staffs  of  the  New 


INTERIOR    OF    A   GERMAN   SUBMARINE. 
The  Commander  looking  through  a  periscope. 


Zealand  and  Indomitable,  those  two  ships  were 
able  to  attain  a  speed  greatly  in  excess  of  their 
normal.  The  result  was  that  the  squadron 
gradually  closed  to  within  20,000  yards  of  the 
rear  ship  (the  Bliicher)  of  the  enemy,  who  were 
in  single  line-ahead,  with  their  light  cruisers 
ahead  and  a  large  nimiber  of  destroyers  on  their 
starboard  beam.  The  first  shot  was  fired  by  the 
Lion  at  8.52,  but  fell  short,  and  from  that  time 
single  shots  were  fixed  at  intervals  to  test  the 
range,  imtil  at  9.9  the  Lion  hit  the  Bliicher  for 
the  first  time.  At  8.20  the  Tiger,  which  was 
following  the  Lion,  had  drawn  up  sufficiently  to 
be  able  to  open  fire  on  the  Bliicher,  and  the  Lion 
now  turned  her  attention  to  the  third  ship  in 
the  German  line,  which  was  hit  by  several  salvos 
at  18,000  yards.  The  Princess  Royal,  in  turn 
getting  within  range,  opened  fire  on  the  Bliicher, 
and  as  this  latter  ship  now  began  to  drop  astern 
somewhat,  she  became  exposed  to  the  gims  of 
the  New  Zealand,  the  Princess  Royal  then 
shifting  her  fire  to  the  third  ship  in  tlie  Gennan 
line  and  inflicting  considerable  damage  on  her. 
Diu-ing  these  operations  the  British  flotilla 
cruisers  and  destroyers  gradually  dropped  back 
from  a  position  broad  on  the  beam  of  the  battle 
cruisers  to  the  port  quarter,  so  that  their  smoko 
might  not  foul  the  range,  but  as  the  enemy 
destroyers  threatened  attack,  the  Meteor  and 
M  destroyer  division  passed  ahead,  skilfully 
handled  by  Captain  the  Hon.  H.  Meade. 


158 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GROUP  OF  GERMAN  SAILORS  RESCUED  FROM  THE   "  BlUgHER. 


About  9.45  the  Lion  was  engaging  the  leading 
German  ship,  which  was  on  fire  ;  the  Tiger  had 
first  fired  at  the  same  ship,  but,  when  smoke 
interfered,  at  the  Blvicher  ;  the  Princess  Royal 
was  engaged  with  the  third  German  ship,  which 
also  was  on  fire,  while  the  Blvicher,  alreadj^ 
showing  signs  of  having  suffered  severelj%  was 
also  the  mark  of  the  Ne^\'  Zealand.  The  enemy's 
destroyers  were  now  emitting  vast  quantities 
of  smoke  to  screen  their  battle  cruisers,  which 
appeared  to  alter  their  coiu'se  to  the  northward, 
with  the  object  of  increasing  their  distance  ; 
the  rear  ships,  according  to  Sir  David  Beatty's 
dispatch,  certainly  hauled  out  on  the  port 
quarter  of  their  leader,  and  thus  increased  their 
distance  from  the  British  line.  To  meet  this 
manoeuvre  our  battle  cruisers  were  ordered  to 
form  a  line  bearing  north-north-west  and  to 
proceed  at  their  utmost  speed.  The  German 
destroyers  then  giving  evidence  of  an  attempted 
attack,  the  Lion  and  Tiger  opened  fire  on  them, 
causing  them  to  retire  and  resimae  their  original 
course.  The  light  cruisers,  maintaining  their 
position  on  the  port  quarter  of  the  enemy  line, 
were  able  to  observe  and  keep  touch,  or  to  attack 
any  vessel  that  fell  out  of  line. 

The  Bliicher,  which  by  this  time  had  dropped 
considerably  astern  of  her  companions,  was  seen 
to  be  on  fire,  to  have  a  heavy  list,  and  to  be 


apparently  in  a  defeated  condition.  As  she 
hauled  ovit  to  port  and  steered  north  the 
Indomitable  was  ordered  to  break  to  the  north 
and  attack.  A  few  minutes  later  submarines 
were  reported  near  the  line,  and  Admiral 
Beattj',  who  liimself  saw  the  wash  of  a  periscope 
two  points  on  the  starboard  bow,  at  once  turned 
to  port.  Then  the  Lion  suffered  an  injury 
\%  hich  at  three  minutes  past  1 1  was  reported  as 
being  incapable  of  immediate  repair,  and,  in 
consequence,  her  course  was  shaped  north-west. 
Admiral  Beatty  also  found  it  necessary  to 
transfer  his  flag  to  another  vessel ;  accordin;:;ly, 
at  1L20,  he  called  the  torpedo  boat  destroyer 
Attack  alongside,  and  shifting  his  flag  to  her  at 
about  11.35,  proceeded  at  fvill  speed  to  rejoin 
the  squadron.  He  met  them  at  noon  retiring 
north-north-west. 

Boarding  the  Princess  Roj^al  at  about 
12.20  p.m.,  he  learnt  from  her  captain  what  had 
happened  in  his  absence  since  the  Lion  fell  out 
of  the  line.  The  Bliicher  had  been  sunk,  and  on 
the  vessels  that  went  to  rescue  her  sur^avors  (of 
whom  about  250  were  saved)  a  Zeppelin  and 
a  sea-plane  endeavoured  to  drop  bombs.  The 
three  German  battle  cruisers  had  continued 
their  course  eastward,  in  a  considerably 
damaged  condition,  the  Derfflinger  and  the 
Sejdlitz,  it  is  believed,  suffering  in  particular. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


159 


Undoubted Ij-,  as  Sir  David  Beatty  remarked 
in  his  preliminary  report,  the  Lion's  mishap 
deprived  our  ships  of  a  greater  victory  than  that 
which  they  actually  put  to  their  credit. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  our  success  was  dearly 
bought.  None  of  our  ships  was  lost.  The 
Lion  and  the  Tiger  were  both  hit,  but  although 
the  former  had  to  be  towed  to  port  by  the 
Indomitable,  the  material  injury  to  both  ships 
was  only  such  as  could  be  repaired  in  a  com- 
paratively short  time.  No  member  of  the 
Lion's  crew  was  killed,  but  21  were  wounded  ; 
on  the  Tiger  one  officer,  Engineer-Commander 
Charles  G.  Taylor,  and  nine  men  were  killed,  and 
three  officers  and  eight  men  were  injured.  On 
the  destroyer  Meteor,  which  also  was  disabled, 
three  men  were  killed  and  two  wounded,  one 
of  whom  died. 

Referring  to  the  action  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons in  February,  ]\Ir.  Churcliill  said  :  ^ 

The  action  was  not  forced,  because  the  enemj^,  after 
abandoning  their  wounded  consort,  the  Bliicher,  made 
good  their  escape  into  waters  infested  by  their  submarines 
and  mines.  But  this  combat  between  the  finest  ships 
in  both  navies  is  of  immense  significance  and  value  in 
the  light  which  it  throws  upon  rival  systems  of  design 
and  armament  and  upon  relative  gunnery  efficiency.  It 
is  the  first  test  we  have  ever  had,  and  without  depending 
too  much  upon  it  I  think  it  is  at  once  important  and 
encouraging.  First  of  all  it  vindicates,  so  far  as  it 
goes,  the  theories  of  design,  and  particularly  of  big- 
gun  armament,  always  identified  with  Lord  Fislier. 
The  range  of  the  British  guns  was  found  to  exceed  that 
of  the  German.  Although  the  German  shell  is  a  most 
formidable  instrument  of  destruction,  the  bursting- 
smashing    power    of    the    heavier    British    projectile  is 


decidedly  greater,  and — this  is  the  great  thing — our 
shooting  is  at  least  as  good  as  theirs.  The  Xavy,  while 
always  working  very  hard — no  one  except  themselves 
knows  how  hard  they  have  worked  in  these  years — have 
credited  the  Germans  with  a  sort  of  super-efficiency  in 
gunnery,  and  we  have  always  been  prepared  for  some 
surprises  in  their  system  of  control  and  accuracy 
of  fire.  But  there  is  a  feeling  after  the  combat  of 
January  24  that  perhaps  our  na\"al  officers  were 
too  diffident  in  regard  to  their  own  professional  skill 
in  gunnery. 

Then  the  guns.  While  the  Germans  were  building 
11-inch  guns  we  built  12-inch  and  13J-inch  guns.  Before 
they  advanced  to  the  12 -inch  gun  we  had  large  numbers 
of  ships  armed  wdth  the  13'5.  It  was  said  by  the  oppo- 
site school  of  naval  force  that  a  smaller  gun  fires  faster 
and  has  a  higher  velocity,  and  therefore  the  greater 
destructive  power.  Krupp  is  the  master  gunmaker  in 
the  world,  and  it  was  very  right  and  proper  to  take  such 
a  possibility  into  consideration.  Everything  that  we 
have  learnt,  however,  so  far  shows  that  we  need  not  at 
all  doubt  the  wisdom  of  our  policy  or  the  excellence  of 
our  material. 

In  Germany  the  action  caused  a  disappoint- 
ment even  disproportionate  to  its  real  naval 
importance.  For  some  weeks  the  Press  Bureau 
of  the  German  Admiralty  noisily  claimed  that, 
at  any  rate,  one  British  battle  cruiser — to  say 
nothing  of  two  or  more  destroyers — had  been 
sunk.  In  reality  it  was  seen  that,  for  the  time 
at  any  rate,  even  brief  and  occasional  excur- 
sions to  British  waters  must  be  abandoned.  It 
was  no  longer  possible  to  pretend  that  the  raids 
on  Yarmouth  and  on  Scarborough  and  the 
Hartlepools  had  been  the  prelude  to  greater 
things.  Such  enterprises,  even  while  the 
German  cruiser  squadron  was  intact,  involved 
great  risk  and  little  profit.     Faced  by  a  strength 


FUNERAL  OF  CAPTAIN  ERDMANN  OF  THE  "  BLUCHER." 


160 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


PAY    DAY    ON    BOARD    A   MAN-OF-WAR. 


of  even  five  to  four  in  representative  ships  a 
German  raiding  force  could  not  but  retire,  and 
in  all  the  circumstances  of  January  24 — they 
would  have  been  even  less  favourable  if  the 
squadron  had  advanced  further — the  Germans 
might  think  themselves  fortunate  to  have 
escaped  with  no  greater  losses. 


The  German  naval  authorities  now  recon- 
sidered the  whole  situation.  They  decided,  as 
we  shall  see  in  another  chapter,  to  abandon  a 
few  more  of  the  rules  of  civilized  warfare,  and 
to  threaten  British  and  neutral  commerce  with 
indiscriminate  extermination  by  submarines 
and  mines. 


CHAPTER    LIV. 

THE    GERMAN    COUNTER-OFFEN- 
SIVE AND  THE  BELGIAN  BATTLE 

OF  THE  YSER. 


General  von  Moltke  Superseded  by  General  von  Falkenhayn— The  New  Plan  of  the 
Kaiser — Advance  on  Calais — Position  of  the  Allied  Troops  on  October  16 — Retreat  of 
French  Marines  from  Ghent  to  the  Yser — The  Battle  of  the  Yser  Begins — Intervention 
OF  British  Flotilla — Ronarc'h's  Defence  op  Dixmude — The  Germans  Force  the  Yser  at 
Ti£Rvaete — Arrival  of  French  Reinforcements — Considerations  on  the  Fighting. 


DURING  1914  the  greatest  and  most 
decisive     battles     in     the     Western 
Theatre   of   War   were   those   of  the 
Marne     and     Ypres,    of    which    the 
former  lias  been  described  in  Vol.  II.,  Chapter 
XXXII. 

Under  the  titla  of  Battle  of  Ypres  are  included 
the  fighting  from  October  16  onwards  between 
the  sea  at  Nieuport-Bains  and  Dixmude,  popu- 
larly known  as  the  Battle  of  the  Yser,  and  the 
struggle  which  commenced  on  October  19 
from  Dixmude  through  Ypres  to  Armentieres 
on  the  l^ys,  and  thence  to  La  Bassee. 

The  Battle  of  the  Yser  may  bo  considered  in 
two  parts.  In  the  first  the  Belgians,  with  the 
aid  of  a  brigade  of  French  Marines  under  Rear- 
Adniiral  Ronarc'h,  defended  the  lower  course  of 
the  Yser  and  its  canal  from  October  16  to  2.3. 
In  the  second,  the  bulk  of  the  wearied  but 
dauntless  soldiers  of  King  Albert  were  with- 
drawn and  their  places  taken  by  a  portion  of 
the  Army  of  General  d'Urbal. 

It  was  not  till  November  17  that  the  Battle' 
of  Ypres  came  to  an  end. 
Vol.  111.— Part  31.  1 


The  Battle  of  the  Marne  lasted  a  week  ;  the 
Battle  of  Ypres  a  month.  The  credit  for  the 
former  victory  rests  with  the  French,  though 
the  British  Army  rendered  them  most  valuable 
assistance.  The  Battle  of  Ypres,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  won  bj?^  the  united  efforts  of  the 
British,  French,  and  Belgians,  and  each  of  the 
Allied  nations  may  look  back  on  it  with  tlie 
proudest  feelings.  It  was — so  Joffre  is  reported 
to  have  said — "  the  greatest  battle  of  the 
world." 

During  the  month  of  October  the  Emperor 
William  himself  appeared  on  the  western  front 
to  supervise  the  operations,  and  on  the  25th  it 
was  aimounced  that  the  Chief  of  the  General 
Staff,  (General  von  Moltke,  had  fallen  ill,  and 
that  the  Prussian  Minister  of  War,  General  von 
Falkenhayn.  had  tak(>n  over  his  duties.  It  soon 
appeared  that  Moltke  had  in  reality  been  super- 
seded, and  it  was  clear  that  sharp  differences 
of  opinion  had  arisen  about  tho  [Ian  of  cani- 
])aign.  INloltke,  it  seemed,  had  insisted  that 
the  first  and  main  strategic  object  should  he 
to  break  the  Allies'  lines  at  Verdun,  while  the 


01 


162 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


THE    CROWN    PRINCE    OF    BAVARIA, 
Reviewing  Troops. 


Kaiser,  unable  to  reach  Paris,  was  obsessed 
with  the  desire  to  gain  possession  of  the  Channel 
coast  for  the  better  prosecution  of  the  war 
against  England.  Moltke  disappeared,  and 
until  December,  when  he  was  definitely 
appointed    Chief    of     the     Staff,     Falkenhayn 


.From  a  Skach  by  John  S.  Sargent,  R.A 

BRIGADIER-GENERAL    FOWKE,    C.B., 
Chief  Engineer  British  Expeditionary  Force. 


nominally  united  the  posts  of  Minister  of  War 
and  Chief  of  the  General  Staff.  Falkenliayn 
was  fifty-three  years  old,  and  had  only  been  in 
office  about  a  year.  He  had  at  one  time  been 
Chief  of  the  General  Staff  of  the  16th  Army 
Corps  at  INIetz,  but  he  was  best  known  for  his 
work  in  China  on  the  staff  of  Count  Waldersee, 
in  the  expedition  of  1900,  when  the  German 
troops  had  been  bidden  b}^  the  Kaiser  to 
emulate  the  Huns  of  Attila. 

The  strategy  now  adopted  by  the  Kaiser 
and  Falkenhayn  has  been  severelj'  and  justly 
criticized.  They  struck  simultaneously  at 
Warsaw  and  Calais,  and  found  that  in  neitlier 
theatre  were  they  strong  enough  to  achieve  the 
desired  success.  Pitilessly,  but  in  vain,  they 
sacrificed  troops  of  all  sorts,  including  large 
numbers  of  old  men  and  young  boys  who  had 
volunteered  for  service  at  the  outbreak  of  war. 
Although  the  success  of  the  enterprise  would 
undoubtedly  have  produced  enormous  results, 
its  initiation  must  be  ascribed  largely  to  poUtical 
rather  than  military  considerations.  It  was 
necessary  to  appease  the  Emperor's  own  im- 
patience, but  it  was  no  less  necessary  to  provide 
the  German  people  %vith  some  fresh  promise  of 
dazzling  success. 

The  preparations  for  ensuring  success  at  the 
outset  of  the  war,  to  impress  the  world  with 
Germany's  might,  had  been  enormous  and 
made  regardless  of  expense.  Though  the  Ger- 
man infantry  tactics  were  obsolete,  the  German 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAH. 


163 


military  machine  was,  on  the  whole,  the  most 
perfect  that  had  ever  been  constructed.  Men 
with  the  brains  of  captains  of  industry  had 
toiled  vmremittingly  to  provide  the  German 
Army  with  every  advantage  that  foresight  and 
experience  could  suggest — from  the  gigantic 
howitzers  which  were  to  batter  down  the  per- 
manent fortifications  of  Belgium  and  France  to 
the  stick  of  liquorice  which  the  sentry  was  to 
suck  lest  by  a  cough  he  should  betray  his  pre- 
sence to  the  enemy.  The  coiuitries  to  be  in- 
vaded had  been  examined  with  meticulous 
accuracy.  They  were  honeycombed  with  -spies 
and  traitors  of  both  sexes,  in  all  ranks  of  Society. 
Innumerable  wireless  installations  and  tele- 
phones had  in  peace-time  been  hidden  on  foreign 
soil  to  signal  to  the  Germans  the  movements 
of  their  potential  enemies.  Soldiers  had  been 
even  trained  to  utilize  the  arnis  of  windmills  for 
the  purpose  of  conveying  information.  The 
innumerable  disguises — British,  Belgian,  French, 
Russian  uniforms,  women's  dresses,  priests' 
robes — in  which  the  German  soldiers  often 
presented  themselves  during  the  War,  show 
how  thoroughly  detail  had  been  worked  ovit. 
And  now — in  October,  1914 — what  must  have 
been  the  thoughts  and  sensations  of  those 
who  had  brought  on  this  war  ?  They  had 
intoxicated  the  German  people,  and  its  enthu- 
siasm, if  not  "  irresistible,"  had  been  tremend- 


MAJOR-GEN.  SIR  THOMPSON  CAPPER. 

ous.  Treaties  to  which  the  Prussian  Govern- 
ment had  been  a  party  had  been  torn  up  ;  the 
rules  of  International  Law  treated  as  school- 
masters might  treat  the  resolutions  of  a  group 
of  children.  The  horrors  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion had  been  renewed  by  the  Armies  of  the 
Sovereign  who  had  up  to  August,  1914,  posed  as 


GERMAN    PRISONERS    AT    FURNES. 


164 


TH1-:     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE     WAR. 


(/3 

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si 
H 

O 
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■so 
'u 


<u 


o 

.u 


23 

Q 

Q 
Z 

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O 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


165 


tho  gnardian  of  European  Law  and  Order. 
"  When  we  left  Belgium,"  wrote  a  Saxon 
oflficer  in  his  diary,  under  August  26,  "  we  left 
all  the  villages  in  flames.  It  is,"  he  added, 
"  like  the  Thirty  Years'  War — murder  and  fire 
everywhere." 

An  airman  who  flew  over  the  German  lines 
at  Charleroi  during  August  said  that  the 
Germans  "  covered  the  plains  like  a  moving 
sea."  This  sea  of  human  beings — murdering, 
burning,  burgling,  raping — had  flowed  on 
towards  Paris.  "  The  measures,"  so  the  Ger- 
man General  Staff  had  instructed  the  German 
soldiers,  "  which  can  be  taken  by  one  State 
against  another  in  order  to  obtain  the  object 
of  the  War,  to  compel  one's  opponent  to  submit 
to  one's  will,  may  be  summarised  in  the  two  ideas 
of  Violence  and  Cunning."  * 

And  now  it  was  that  the  eyes  of  the  Kaiser 
began  to  be  opened  to  the  real  proportion  of  the 
task  he  had  undertaken.  Despite  the  barbarous 
example  made  of  Louvain,  the  easy-going  Bel- 
gians (as  they  had  been  siu-Tiused  to  be  before 
the  War),  had  continued  their  heroic  resistance. 
The  British  "rifle  club  " — to  use  a  Prussian 
expression  for  the  British  Army — had  taken  a 
terrible  toll  of  Kluck's  masses.  They  had  pur- 
sued it  with  slackening  zeal  as  they  began  to 
discover  the  prowess  of  the  British  soldier. 
Inspired  by  the  cool  and  resolute  Joffre.  the 
Armies  of  France  had  refused  to  know  when 
they  were  beaten,  Verdiin  had  remained  un- 
taken,  and  the  Germans  under  the  Kaiser's 
eyes  had  failed  to  penetrate  through  the  gap  of 
Nancy.  The  desperate  effort  to  pierce  the 
French  centre  beyond  the  Mame  had  been 
foiled  by  Foch  ;  Manoury's  stroke  at  Kluck's 
communications  had  forced  the  invaders  to  retire 
behind  the  Aisne.  There  they  had  held  their 
own  and  battered  Reims  Cathedral. 

Meanwhile  East  Prussia  had  been  invaded  by 
the  Russians  and,  though  Hindenburg  in  the 
district  of  the  Masurian  Lakes  had  inflicted  on 
them  a  serious  defeat,  no  further  successes  had 
been  gained  by  him  or  his  Austrian  colleagues 
in  the  Eastern  Theatre  of  War. 

Far  from  it.  The  Russians  in  engagement 
after  engagement  had  crushed  the  Austrians, 
overrvin  Galicia,  captiu-ed  Lemberg,  invested 
Przemysl,  and  approached  Cracow.  Their 
advance  guards  were  on  the  Carpathians.  If 
they  crossed  them  they  would  harry  Hungary  ; 
if,  masking  Cracow.,  they  entered  Silesia  they 

*   "  The  German  War  Book,"  p.  64. 


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CONVENT    OF    THE    LITTLE    SISTERS 

OF    THE    POOR    AT    NIEUPORT, 

Damaged  by  a  German  Shell. 

would  be  in  the  midst  of  one  of  the  two  most 
important  industrial  districts  of  Germany. 

Not  even  fron^  the  Serbian  frontier  had  come 
good  news.  The  mountaineers  had  repulsed 
the  Austrian  so-called  punitive  expedition  with 
heavy  loss.  Turkey  had  not  yet  decided  to 
throw  in  her  lot  with  the  Dual  Alliance,  and 
each  day  the  anti-German  feeling  in  Italy  and 
Roumania  was  rising. 

If  the  War  I^ord  turned  his  eyes  to  the  sea 
the  outlook  was  still  more  unfavourable.  Tho 
"  Admiral  of  the  Atlantic  "  saw  the  magnificent 
commercial  fleet  of  Germany  hiding,  interned, 
sunk,  or  captured.  The  Emden  and  a  few 
cruisers  were  still  at  large,  but  most  of  the 
German  War  Fleet  wa-s  lurking  in  the  Iviel 
Canal  or  luider  cover  of  the  coa.st  fortresses.  It 
had  not  even  obtained  complete  comimand  of  the 
Baltic  !  To  all  intents  and  purposes,  the 
British  and  French  Navies  were  ruling  the 
German  Ocean,  the  Chaimel,  and  the  Mediter- 
ranean. As  a  consequence  the  businesses  of 
CJermany  and  Austria-Hungary  began  to  suffer 
from  a  creeping  paralysis.     Cotton,  tho  basis  of 


166 


■THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


BELGIAN    TROOPS    LANDING    AT    OSTEND. 


all  modern  explosives,  without  which  the  only 
useful  propellant  could  not  be  manufactured, 
and  copper,  which  was  necessary  for  the  driving 
bands  of  shells — to  make  them  take  the  rifling — 
were  daily  becoming  scarcer. 

Beyond  the  sea  the  German  Colonies  one  by 
one  were  falling  into  the  hands  of  the  Allies. 
The  Japanese  had  closed  in  on  Tsing-Tau,  and 
its  capture  could  not  long  be  delayed.  The 
LTnited  States  had  been  shocked  by  the  Belgian 
atrocities,  and  the  Kaiser's  old  friend,  the  ex- 
Presidcnt  Roosevelt,  had  denounced  the  authors 
of  them  in  no  measured  language.  India, 
loyal  from  Cape  Comorin  to  Peshawur,  was 
sending  a  contingent  of  warlike  troops  to  the 
theatre  of  war  ;  her  Princes  were  vieing  with 
one  another  in  placing  their  persons  and  their 
wealth  at  the  disposal  of  the  Empire.  Egypt, 
far  from  throwing  off  the  British  yoke,  was 
preparing  to  resist  in^■asion,  and  in  a  brief  two 
months  Abbas  was  a  refugee  in  Constantinople, 
and  his  uncle  ruled  in  his  place  independently, 
and  no  longer  the  feudatory  of  the  Caliph. 
Canada,  Australia  and  New  Zealand  were  send  • 
ing  their  stalwart  youths  to  the  front.  In  a  few 
months  army  after  army  would  be  poiu-ing 
across  the  Channel  to  join  Sir  John  French's, 
General  Joffre"s  and  King  Albert's  forces. 
Luxemburg,  nine-tenths  of  Belgium,  with 
Liege,  Brussels,  Antwerp,  Ostend  and  a  con- 
Jsiderable  tract  of  France  were,  it  is  true,  in  the 


■  possession  of  the  Germans,  but  how  long  wxnild 
it  be  before  the  Germans  and  Austrians  would 
be  overwhelmed  by  nmnbers  in  both  theatres  of 
-war  ?     But  there  was  no  going  back. 

At  this  critical  monient  the  Kaiser  may  have 
remembered  the  words  of  M.  de  Faramond,  the 
French  Naval  Attache  at  Berlin  in  1913,  "the 
German  soldier  is  no  longer  natiu-ally  what  he 
had    been   40    j'ears    ago — a    simple,   religious 

■  man,  ready  to  die  at  the  order  of  his  King." 
Death  he  was  still  ready  to  meet,  but  chiefly 
for  hope  of  the  gain  to  be  expected  from 
victory. 

The  modern  Moltke,  animated  by  the  spirit 
of  his  illustrious  rnicle,  might  point  out  that 
military  considerations  required  that  the  main 
effort  of  the  Germans  should  be  directed  by 
Verdiui;  political  exigencies  demanded  some- 
thing more  spectacular.  While  Hindenburg 
was  to  capture  \\'arsaw,  the  Kaiser  himself 
would  clear  Belgium  of  the  Allies  and  annex  it, 
captiu-e  Calais,  and  thence  strike  both  at 
England  and  at  Paris. 

Accordingly,  from  the  beginning  of  October 
corps  after  corps  was  brought  into  the  space 
between  the  Lys  and  the  sea  until  fifteen  were 
assembled,  grouped  in  two  armies,  and  with 
them  four  corps  of  cavalry.  The  army  nearer 
the  coast  was  under  the  Duke  of  Wiu-temberg, 
the  other  being  commanded  by  the  Crown  Prince 
of  Bavaria.     The  whole  formed  a  force  equal 


THE     TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


IGl 


to,  if  not  greater  than,  tlie  liost  which  Napoleon 
led  across  the  Nienien  into  Russia  in  1812. 

Such  were  the  conditions  when  the  Battles 
of  the  Yser  and  Ypres  commenced. 

As  an  example  of  the  sort  of  hopes  \\hich 
wt;re  filling  the  German  mind  we  will  quote  an 
article  written  towards  the  end  of  October  in 
the  ^dchsischer  Staats-Anzeiyer  by  General 
Baron  von  Ardenne  : 

If  the  English  watch  oia  our  naval  position  Boikuni- 
Wilhelmshaven-Heligoland-Brunsbiittel  is  almost  im- 
possible in  the  present  circumstances — np  to  now  it  has 
not  been  at  all  successful — it  will  become  quite  im- 
possible when  Belgium  and  the  north  coast  of  France  to 
the  mouth  of  the  Seine  are  in  German  hands. 

The  somewhat  improbable  report  that  the  French  have 
retreated  from  Boulogne  opens  up  a  wide  view  over 
Germany's  future  position  in  the  fight.  In  the  course  of 
time  we  shall  be  in  possession  of  Calais,  probably  also  of 
Dieppe  and  Havre.  At  Calais  the  Channel  narrows 
down  to  a  width  of  35-40  kilometres  (22-25  miles).  Our 
305  (12  in.)  howitzers  have  a  rangs  of  14  miles  (height  of 
such  a  shot  4,370  yards).  The  range  of  our  42  cm. 
(17  in.)  howitzers  is  still  greater.  England  can  expect 
■utill  further  artillery  surprises. 

Even  if  we  cannot  shoot  from  the  French  coast  to  the 
English,  a  safety  zone  can  be  made  for  German  ships 
which  will  cover  more  than  half  the  navigable  water, 
[n  the  French  harbours  bases  can  be  had  for  torpedo- 
boats  and  submarines,  cruisers,  scouts,  etc.,  and  — last 
but  not  least — bases  for  our  Zeppelins.  These  bases  on 
the  French  coast  can  be  made  absolutely  impregnable 
from  the  sea  by  double  or  triple  rows  of  mines,  especially 
anchored  mines.  To  anchor  mines  in  these  waters  is 
comparatively  easy. 

That  this  will  be  no  joke  for  the  British  Isles  can 
easily  be  seen  from  the  fact  that  England  is,  so  far  as 
its    food    is    concerned,    dependent    chiefly    on    foreign 


countries.  Any  disturbance  in  its  supplies  would  be 
badly  felt.  Even  now  our  comm?rce-;les.royers  and  the 
sinking  of  ships  carrying  contraijuiid,  including  food,  are 
proving  a  thorn  in  Great  Britain's  side.  When  private 
property  is  no  longer  safe  at  sea  there  will  be  a  severe 
collapse  in  the  import  of  foodstuffs. 

In  spite  of  all  England's  mine-laying,  in  spite  of  her 
great  Fleet,  she  is  always  afraid  of  a  German  force 
landing  in  the  United  Kingdom.  When  the  French 
north  coast  is  in  our  hands,  such  an  invasion — which 
is  now  considered  a  foolish  romance — will  be  ea.sily 
possible,  especialli/  when  England  continues  to  send 
troops  au-ay  from  the  island.* 

To  stimtilate  the  enthusiasm  and  patriotism 
of  the  German  ma.sses  the  most  extrava- 
gant rumotirs  were  circtilated  by  the  Imperial 
Government.  For  instance,  some  days  before 
the  appearance  of  Ardenne's  article  there  was 
published  in  a  Hamburg  paper  what  purported 
to  be  a  "  Stockholm  telegram."  It  was  headed 
"  The  G3rman  Sword  of  Damocles  over  Eng- 
land "  : 

For  nearly  a  week  past  enormous  fleets  of  transports 
have  formed  almost  a  connected  bridge  over  the  Channel 
between  Kamsgate,  Dover  and  Folkestone  on  the 
l^nglish  coast,  and  Dunkirk,  Calais,  and  Boulogne  on  tlie 
French  coast.  The  English  Press  declares  that  tl.Ls  is 
for  Great  Britain  a  fight  for  life  or  death. 


*  The  Hamburger  Nachrichten,  on  January  31.  1915, 
published  a  communication  from  Berlin  which,  among 
other  things,  stated  that  "  an  expression  of  expert 
opinion  had  been  recently  made  regarding  the  range  of 
German  naval  and  coast  guns,  the  chief  point  of  which 
lies  in  the  assertion  that  from  Calais  the  harbour  defences 
of  Dover  and  the  countrv  1o  the  North  of  Dover  could 
be  bcmbarded  over  n  front  of  live  and  a  half  miles." 


BELGIAN    CAVALRY    ON    THE    MARCH. 


1GB 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAIL 


THE    WAR-WORN    KAISER. 

But,  extravagant  as  may  have  been  the  ideas 
of  the  Germans  on  the  value  to  Germany  of  the 
coast  line  from  Ostend  to  the  Seine,  it  must 
be  admitted  that  if  their  troops  could  have 
seized  Dunkirk,  Calais,  Boulogne,  Staples,  the 
mouth  of  the  Somme,  Dieppe  and  Havre,  the 
chances  of  Germany  succeeding  in  her  scheme 
for  the  domination  of  the  world  would  have  been 
enormously  increased.  The  chief  naval  bases 
of  the  British  fleet  were  within  reach  of  Calais 
and  Boulogne,  and  once  these  won  and  used  as 
German  submarine  and  airship  bases,  the  n^ain 
communications  of  the  fleets  guarding  the  east 
coast  of  England  and  Scotland  would  have 
been  endangered.  Harwich,  Chatham,  Dover 
and  Portsmouth  would  certainly  have  been 
bombarded  by  aircraft,  and  the  nerves  of  the 
vast  population  of  London  would  have  been 
constantly  shaken  by  the  visits  of  Taubes  and 
Zeppelins,  for  the  distance  between  Calais 
and  the  capital  of  the  British  Empire  is  under 
a  hundred  miles,  little  more  than  two  hours' 
journey.  There  would  have  been  more  than 
a  possibility  that  German  aviators  from  Calais 
or  Boulogne  might  have  caused  sensational,  if 


not  important,  damage  to  London.  Raids  by  sea 
on  the  coasts  of  Essex,  Kent,  and  Sussex  would, 
too,  have  been  hazarded  by  men,  careless  of  the 
lives  of  their  troops,  to  strike  terror  into  the 
British  nation. 

If,  in  addition,  the  Germans  had  rejjeated 
their  success  of  August  and  had  forced  their 
way  down  to  Amiens,  the  communications  of 
the  British  troops  in  France  would  once  more 
have  had  to  be  shifted  to  St.  Xazaire,  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Loire.  Maud'huy's  Army  would, 
it  is  likely,  have  had  to  evacuate  Arras  and  join 
Castelnau's  in  the  plain  between  the  Somme  and 
the  Oise.  The  prestige  of  the  German  arms,, 
impaired  at  the  Battle  of  the  Marne  and  not 
improved  by  the  Battles  of  the  Aisne,  Roye- 
Peronne  and  Arras,  would  have  been  rehabili- 
tated. 

The  Battles  of  the  Yser  and  Ypres  brought 
all  these  by  no  means  visionary  plans  to  an 
untimely  ending. 

The  forces  dispatched  by  the  Kaiser  to 
follow  the  Belgian  Army,  Rawlinson's  Corps, 
and  Rear-Admiral  Ronarc'h's  Marines,  retiring 
from  Antwerp  or  Ghent  towards  the  Franco- 
Belgian  frontier,  necessarily  collided  with  them 
and  the  other  Allied  troops  moving  forward  to- 
the  north  of  the  Lys.  These  comprised  General 
Bidon's  two  Territorial  Infantry  Divisions  (the 
87th  and  89th),  De  ]\Iitry's  four  Cavahy 
Divisions,  the  British  Cavalry  Corps,  and  the 
III.  Corps. 

Thus  two  long  lines  of  men  in  mutual 
hostility  were  advancing  towards  one  another, 
each  endeavouring  to  act  on  and  against  his 
adversary's  outer  wing. 

A  brief  accomit  of  the  events  irmnediately 
preceding  October  16  is  needed  to  make  the 
situation  clear  to  the  reader. 

On  September  20  Joffre  had  commenced  his 
turning  movement  between  the  English  Channel 
and  the  Scheldt  against  the  German  communica 
tions.  The  enemy,  after  investing  Antwerp, 
had  replied  by  a  counter-movement  on  Lille 
and  Ypres,  thus  threatening  Dunlcirk,  Calais, 
and  Boulogne.  To  ward  off  the  German  offen- 
sive Lord  I^tehener  had  dispatched  British 
INIarines  imder  General  Paris  and  the  3rd 
Cavalry  and  the  7th  Infantry  Divisions  under 
Sir  Henry  Rawlinson  to  Ostend  and  Zeebrugge.  * 


*  The    7th    Infantry    Division,    under    Major-General 
Sir  T.  Capper,  C  B.,  D.S.O.,  was  constituted  as  follows  : 

20/A     Infantry     liric/ade     (Brigadier-General     H.     J» 
Ruggles-Brise.  M.V.O.) : 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


169 


The  7th  Division  was  outside  the  six  regulax 
Divisions  which  formed  the  Expeditionary 
Force.  It  had  been  stated  some  years  pre- 
viously in  the  House  of  Commons  that  it  was 
intended  to  complete  that  Force  by  bringing 
home  various  luiits  from  foreign  stations,  and 
this  was  actually  done.  The  20th  Brigade  was, 
however,  made  up  of  battalions  on  home  ser- 
vice, except  the  2nd  Gordon  Highlanders, 
who  came  from  Cairo.    In  the  21st  Brigade  two 


lat  Grenadier  Guards. 

2rKl  Scots  Guards. 

2nd  Border  Regiment.  ^ 

2nd  Gordon  Highlanders. 
2lst     Infantry      Brigade      (Brigadier-General     H.     E. 
Watts,  C.B.)  : 

2nd  Bedfordshire  Regiment. 

2nd  Yorks  Regiment. 

2nd  Royal  Scots  Fusiliers. 

2nd  Wiltshire  Regiment. 
22nd    Infantry    Brigade    (Brigadier-General    S.    T.    B. 
Lawford) : 

2nd  Queen's  Royal  West  Surrey  Regiment. 

2nd  Royal  Warwick  Regiment. 

1st  Royal  Welsh  Fusiliei-s. 

1st  South  Staffordshire  Regiment. 

Northumberland  Hussars  Yeomanry. 
This  appears  to  have  been  the  first  of  the  non-regular 
regiments  to  take  the  field. 

The  Cyclist  Corps. 

14th  Brigade  Royal  Horse  Artillery. 

22nd  Brigade  Royal  Field  Artillery. 

35th  Brigade  Royal  Field  Artillery. 

.3rd  Brigade  (Heavy)  Royal  Garrison  Artillery. 

111th  Brigade  Royal  Garrison  Artillery 

112th  Brigade  Royal  Garri.son  Artillery. 

A  pom-pom  detachment. 

7th  Divisional  Ammunition  Column. 


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ak^'^:              .^ 

GURKHAS   SHARPENING   THEIR   KNIVES. 

battalions  were  drawn  from  Gibraltar,  one  from 
the  Transvaal,  the  fourth  from  Guernsey.  The 
22nd  Brigade  had  two  battalions  from  the  Trans- 
vaal and  two  from  Malta.  The  Artillery  was 
made  up  from  various  sources,  home  and  f  oreigji. 


BRITISH    INFANTRY    ENTRENCHING, 


170 


Till':     TIMES    HI  STORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


A    FRENCH    MACHINE    GUN    SECTION    IN    ACTION. 


The  Marines  had  assisted  in  the  defence  of 
Antwerp,  l)ut,  owing  to  the  delay  in  sweeping 
the  mines  \\  hich  the  Germans  had  managed  to 
lay  in  front  of  Ostend,  Sir  Henry  Rawlinson 
could  not  operate  lioldly  against  the  enemy, 
but  was  obliged  to  confine  himself  to  the  minor 
alternati\e  of  protecting,  with  the  French 
Marines  of  Rear-Admiral  Ronarc'h,  the  retreat 
of  the  Belgian  Army  and  British  ^Marines. 

,\ntwerp  had  succumbed  on  October  9,  but, 
shortly  before,  the  bulk  of  the  Belgian  Army 
had  retired,  and  from  this  date  Rawlinson  and 
Ronarc'h  were  able  to  cover  the  further  with- 
drawal of  these  troops  to  a  jiosition  on  and 
behind  the  banks  of  the  canalised  Yser  between 
Dixmude  and  the  sea  at  Nieuport -Bains. 

(ihent,  Bruges,  Ostend  were  lost  in  succes- 
sion, and  the  Belgian  coast  from  Ostend  to  the 
Dutch  frontier  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  foe. 
Already,  on  October  15,  the  advance  guard  of 
the  German  III.  Corps  was  moving  through 
Ostend  on  Xieuport  and  Dixmude. 

In  the  meantime,  on  the  night  of  the  11th- 
12th,  Ghent  was  being  evacuated  by  part  of 
the  7th  Division  (Capper's)  and  Ronarc'h's 
Marines.  The  jNIarines  led  the  way.  To 
encourage  their  men  the  officers  left  their 
motor-cars  and  marched  on  foot.  The  moon 
was  shining  and  the  air  chilly.'  At  daybreak 
tJiey  reached  Aeltre,  where  they  halted  for 
refreshment.  At  4  p.m.  the  column  touched 
Thielt,  which  was  entered  by  Capper's  troops 


two  hours  later.  Hot-foot  beliind  them  pressed 
some  50,000  Germans,  but  the  night  was  passed 
without  the  enemy  disturbing  the  French  or 
British.  A  village  3Iayor  had  at  the  cost  of 
his  life  put  the  enemy  on  a  false  scent.  The 
next  morning  (the  13th)  a  Taube,  whose 
observer  was  doubtless  trying  to  locate  the 
column  of  which  the  pvirsuers  had  lost  contact, 
was  shot  down  by  the  British.  At  3  p.m.  the 
^Marines  reached  Thourout. 

The  7th  Division,  wliich  had  been  preceded 
the  day  before  by  Byng's  Cavalry  Division, 
marched  on  Roulers. 

An  extract  from  the  official  diary  kept 
by  Byng's  Cavalry  Division  and  another 
from  IVIr.  C.  Underwood's  narrative  published 
in  Blackwood's  Magazine  for  March.  1915,  bring 
clearly  before  us  the  movements  of  the  Cavalry 
and  Capper's  Divisions.  Mr.  Underwood  was 
an  Interpreter  appointed  to  the  Headquarters 
Staff  of  the  2 1st  Brigade.  The  diary  below 
should  be  read  in  connexion  with  the  map  on 
pp.  180-1  :— 

Octoher  6. —  After  mobilizing  at  Ludgershall  Camp  the 
Dlvi-ioii  was  railed  to  Southampton,  and  >iailed  on 
October  6  for  Ostend  and  Zeebrugge.  where  it  disem- 
barked early  on  the  8th,  and  came  under  the  orders  of 
the  IV.  Corps. 

October  9.- — On  the  0th  the  Division  concentrated  at 
Bniges,  marclung  from  there  to  Thonrout  (6th  Cavalry 
Brigade)  and  Ruddervoorde  (7th  Cavalry  Brigade)  on 
the  following  daj'. 

Ortober  11. —  On  the  11th  Divisional  Headquarters, 
which  had  stayed  in  Oostcamp  on  the  previous  night, 
mo\ed  to  Thourout.     The  armoured  motors,  which  had 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


171 


joined  the  Divii^ion  on  tlie  previous  day,  succeeded  in 
drawing  first  blood,  capturing  two  oHieers  and  five  men 
in  tlie  direction  of  Ypres. 

Ortobrr  12. — ()n  tlie  12tli  lieadf|narfers  moved  to 
Itoulors,  the  Cth  Cavalry  Brigade  to  tlie  line  Oost- 
nieuwkerke-Roulers,  anil  the  7th  Cavalry  Brigade  to 
Kum  beke-Iseghem , 

O'-tober  13. — 'i'he  enemy  were  reported  to  have  fought 
an  action  near  Hazebroiick  and  to  be  retiring  towards 
Bailleul,  and  our  2nd  Cavalry  Division  to  have  capture<l 
a  place  some  10  miles  south-west  of  Ypres.  Accordingly 
on  the  13th  the  Division  reconnoitred  towards  Ypres 
and  Monin  with  patrols  towards  Comines  and  Wervicq, 
but  no  signs  of  the  enemy  were  found,  and  after  a  long 
day,  during  which  many  of  the  troops  must  have  done 
at  least  50  miles,  the  Division  withdrew  to  the  line 
Dadizeele-Iseghem,  the  7th  Infantry  Division  having  in 
the  meantime  moved  to  Roulers. 

October  14. — Considerable  hostile  forces,  believed  to 
be  in  the  XII.  Corps,  were  reported  to  bo  moving  from 
tho  vicinity  of  Bailleul  towards  Wervicq  and  Menin. 
In  consequence  of  this  the  Division,  followed  by  the 
7th  Infantry  Di\ision,  was  ordered  to  move  on  Ypi'es 
and  to  reconnoitre  to  the  south-west.  This  necessitated 
a  very  early  start.  The  Division  reached  Ypres  at 
•J  a.m.,  and  the  6th  Cavalry  Brigade,  which  formed  the 
advanced  guard,  moved  on  toward  the  line  La  Clytte- 
Lindenhook.  Shortly  after  leaving  Ypres  Ihi'^  brigade, 
assisted  by  lifle  and  revolver  fire  from  everybody  in 
Ypres,  succeeded  in  bringing  down  a  Taube  aeroplane. 
Its  pilot  and  observer  escape:!  into  some  woods,  but  were 
captured  later  on  in  the  day.  The  advance  guard, 
assisted  by  the  armed  motors,  pushed  on  towards  Neuve 
Kglise  and  succeeded  in  killing  or  capturini;  a  consider-, 
able  number  of  the  enemy  dining  the  day,  but  no  formed 
bodies  were  met  with,  though  heavy  tiring  was  heard 
from  the  direction  of  Bailleul.  At  dusk  the  Division 
moved  into  billets  at  Kemmel  (7th  Cavalry  Brigade)  and 
Wytschaete  (remainder  of  the  Division)  in  touch  v.ith  the 
2nd  Cavalry  Division,  with  whom  communication  had 
been  established  during  the  'lay. 

()ciober  16. — No  movement  took  place  on  the  15th, 
but  on  the  following  day  the  Division,  with  the  7th 
Cavalry  Brigade  as  advance  guard,  moved  via  Ypres 
and  Wieltje  to  the  line  Bixschoote-Poelcapelle.  Tlie 
enemy  were  reported  in  considerable  numbers  in  the 
Foret  d'lTouthulst  and  Oostnieuwkerke,  and  a  patrol  of 
1h3  2nd  Life  Guards  was  obliged  to  withdraw  from 
Staden.  Intermittent  fighting  took  place  during  the 
afternoon,  and  at  dusk  French  troops,  having  relieved 
the  7th  Cavalry  Brigade,  the  Division  moveil  into  billets 
at  Passchendaele  (7th  Cavalry  Brigade),  Nieuwemolen 
(6th     Cavalry     Brigade),     and     Zonnebeke     (Divisional 


ROYAL    ENGINEER    LAYING 
TELEPHONE    CABLE. 


Troops).  The  7th  Cavalry  Brigade  arc  known  to  have 
accounted  for  some  10  or  12  killed  during  the  day,  and 
it  is  probable  that  considerably  more  were  wounded. 

By  the  evening  of  the  16th  Byng's  Cavalry 
was  disposed  from  Passchendaele  through 
Nieuwemolen  to  Zonnebeke.  From  Zonne- 
beke    to     Gheluvelt    and    from    (Iheluvelt    to 


L  t.-.Af 


FRENCH    INFANTRY    RUSHING    FORWARD    TO    SUPPORT    THE    FIRING    LINE. 


172 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE     WAR 


ON    THE    DUNES. 
Belgian  Cavalry. 


Zandvoordo  extended  Capper's  Infantry 
Division,  behind  wliich  were  the  woods  to 
the  east  of  Ypres.  INIr.  Underwood,  who 
incidentally  bears  witness  to  the  disgraceful 
conduct  of  the  Germans  in  Ypres  when  it  was 
temporarily  in  their  possession,  provides  us 
with  a  glimpse  of  part  of  the  complicated 
operation  which  was  involved  in  the  with- 
drawal of  Capper's  Division  to  the  neighboui- 
hood  of  that  city  : 

Next  morning,  the  13th,  it  was  reported  that  a  Taube 
had  been  shot  down  at  Divisional  Headquarters  at 
Thielt.  » I  saw  the  French  Marines  arrive  on  their  retreat 
from  Ghent,  after  which  we  left  for  Roulers,  where  the 
Divisional  Headquarters  were  moving.  It  rained  liard 
all  the  way,  and  we  arrived  and  were  billeted  at  17  Rue 
du  Xord.  making  this  our  headquarters  for  the  night, 
Mr.  Louis  Maselis,  a  large  corn  merchant,  being  our  host, 
who  received  us  most  cordially. 

We  left  for  Ypres  at  9.30  a.m.,  and  four  Taubes  flew 
over  us  on  the  road,  but  too  high  to  be  shot  at.  We 
arrived  at  Ypres  at  0.30^  and  Headquarters  were  on  the 
Railway  Square.  That  evening  I  met  Capitainc  Bernaud, 
of  the  79th  Reserve  Regiment,  and  saw  our  first  lot  of 
Allies,  reserve  draaoons,  dismounted  on  the  Square  to 
receive  us.  The  Germans  had  been  through  and  stayed 
one  night,  the  7th,  the  day  we  landed  at  Zeebrvigge.  They 
had  taken  up  their  quarters  in  the  famous  riding  school, 
and  the  first  thing  they  had  done  was  to  break  open  the 
mess-room  and  cellars  and  take  out  all  the  wine,  after 
which  they  broke  up  everything  and  stole  the  mess-plate. 
When  I  saw  it  a  week  later,  tha  school  maneges  were 
strewn  with  broken  bottles,  champagne,  claret,  port,  etc., 
and  every  drawer  and  cupboard  door  burst  open  and 
ransacked.  They  had  cut  all  communications  at  the 
station,  demanded  an  indemnity  of  65,000  francs 
(£2,600),  and  stolen  all  the  money  they  could  lay  hands 
on  from  the  Banque  Nationale.  6,000  loaves  were 
requisitioned  in  the  evening  to  be  ready  next  morning, 
failing  which  there  was  a  penalty  of  £800  (20,000  francs). 


At  10.30  a.m.  a  Taube,  with  pilot  and  observer,  had  been 
brought  down,  but  they  were  not  captured  until  4.30, 
as  they  concealed  theniselves  in  a  wood.  They  were  both 
brought  in,  furious  with  rage,  as  each  weis  seized  by  the 
collar  and  a  revolver  pointed  at  their  heads  by  Belgian 
officers  in  the  car,  which  was  driven  at  the  rate  of  60  miles 
an  hour  at  least  ! 

Next  day  the  whole  brigade  marched  out  to  Halte, 
on  the  Menin-Ypres  road,  dug  trenches,  and  remained 
in  them  all  night.  The  Headquarters  of  the  brigade  I 
billeted  in  the  Secretary  of  Ypres'  Chateau,  not  500 
yards  away. 

In  the  morning  I  had  a  good  deal  of  trouble  to  re- 

.  quisition  oats,  as  it  was  pitch  dark  when  we  were  ordered 

to  advance  to  attack  patrol  of  Germans  towards  Menin. 

About    a    quarter   mile    beyond    Gheluveit    we    engaged 

advance  party  of  Uhlans  at  8.30  a.m.  in  a  thick  fog. 

jNIr.  Underwood  on  the  13th  had  seen 
Ronarc'h's  Marines  passing  through  Thielt  on 
Thourout. 

King  Albert's  idea  was  to  fight  a  delaying 
action  on  a  front  roughly  coinciding  with  the 
line  Menin-Roulers-Thourout-Ghistelles,  while 
the  Belgian  munitions  and  baggage  were  being 
withdrawn  from  Ostend  and  Bruges.*  The 
village  of  Ghistelles  lies  on  the  main  road  from 
Bruges  to  Nieuport  and  on  the  railroad  from 
Thoiu-out  to  Ostend.  In  this  scheme  Ronarc'h's 
Marines  were  to  occupy  a  position  behind 
Thom'out.  resting  on  the  Bois  de  \Vijnendaale 
to   the  north  and  Cortemarck  station  to   the 


*  See  the  first  of  the  articles  on  Ronarc'h's  movements, 
by  M.  Charles  Le  Goffic  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes 
for  March  1st,  1915.  M.  Le  Goffie's  articles  should 
be  carefully  studied  by  all  who  are  interested  in  the 
minute  details  of  the  Battle  of  tlie  Yser. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


173 


south.  At  Cortemarck  converge  railwayo  from 
Dunkirk  and  Ypres. 

Soaked  to  the  skin  by  the  pouring  rain  and 
pursued  by  overwhelming  masses  of  Germans, 
the  French  Marines  left  Thourout  on  the  14tli 
to  fill  their  place  in  the  Une  of  battle.,  but  at 
midnight  the  Admiral  received  an  order  to 
continue  his  retreat  to  the  region  of  Dixmude. 
From  Menin  to  Ghistelles  is  a  distance  of  nearly 
thirty  miles,  and  on  the  night  of  the  14th,  when 
the  Germans  were  in  Bruges  and  approaching 
Ostend,  the  forces  at  the  disposal  of  King 
Albert  were  too  feeble  to  hold  so  extended  a 
front.  The  marshes  round  Ghistelles  could  be 
turned  from  Ostend,  and,  as  the  Germans  held 
some  of  the  bridges  across  the  Lys  west  of 
Menin,  the  right  wing  of  Kng  Albert,  even 
allowing  for  the  assistance  which  might  be 
rendered  it  by  the  British  Cavalry  Corps  and 
the  III.  Corps,  would  also  be  in  imminent  danger. 
It  was  resolved  to  bring  the  whole  of  the  Belgian 
Army  to  the  Yser  and  to  leave  General  d'Urbal 
with  such  portions  of  the  8th  French  Army  as 
were  on  the  spot  and  the  British  Commander- 
in-Chief  with  Rawlinson's  Corps,  the  Cavalry 
Corps,  and  the  III.  Corps  to  fill  the  sjDace 
between  the  Yser  at  Dixmude  and  the  Lys. 
At  4  a.m.,  under  heavy  rain,  the  French  Marines, 
with  their  rear  protected  by  some  Belgian 
Artillery,  set  out  for  Zarren  and  Wercken  on  the 
road  to  Dixmude. 

The  route  was  encumbered  by  refugees. 
They  fell  aside  to  permit  the  passage  of  the 
column.     As  day  dawned,  groups  of  these  poor 


SHELTER    FROM    THE    RAIN    AND    FIHE. 

wretches  could  be  seen  gazing  with  lar'k-lustre 
eyes  at  the  retreating  defenders  of  their  unhappy 
country. 

Leaving  Ronarc'h  on  the   15th  approaching 


THE    OBSERVATION    BALLOON. 
Used  for  watching  the  effect  of  the  British    naval  guns  against  the  German  trenches. 

31—3 


171 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THK    WAR. 


BRITISH    MONITOR    LEAVING    A    FRbNCH    PORT. 


Dixmude,  let  us  see  what  had  been  happening 
in  the  meanwhile  in  the  district  between  Dix- 
mude and  La  Bassee. 

South-west  of  Dixmude  the  Yser  is  joined 
by  a  canal  from  Yj:)re8,  and  from  Ypres  another 
canal  runs  into  the  Lj^s  at  Comines.  On  the 
1 2th,  when  the  \anguard  of  the  Belgian  Army 
reached  Furnes — nine  miles  west  of  Nieuport 
by  the  road  to  Dunkirk — and  when  Sir  Hem\ 
Rawlinson's  troops  had  proceeded  from  Bruges 
and  Ghent  to  the  neighbourhood  of  Roulers — 
thirteen  miles  north-east  of  Ypres — a  con- 
siderable body  of  German  troops  was  located 
west  of  the  line  Comines-Ypres.  Its  right 
rested  on  the  high  ridge,  eleven  miles  long,  to 
the  south-west  of  Ypres  ;  its  left  \\as  on  the 
Lys  at  Estaires. 

From  the  Lys  southward  to  the  Aire-Bethune- 
La  Bassee-Lille  Canal  another  force  of  Germans 
was  entrenched.  The  left  of  this  force  joined 
the  host  opposing  General  de  Maud'huy,  whose 
army  was  disposed  from  Bethune  through  Arras 
to  Albert  on  the  Ancre,  where  it  made  contact 
M'ith  General  de  Castelnau's  army  operating 
between  the  Somme  and  the  Oise. 

If  the  Gernians  could  have  maintained  them- 
selves on  the  ridge  south-west  of  Ypres  and 
between  that  ridge  and  the  Lys,  they  would 
soon  have  been  reinforced  by  portions  of  the 
army  which  had  captured  Antwerp  and  by  the 
<*orps  which  were  about  to  enter  Lille.  From 
the   line  Mont-des-Cats-Meteren-Estaires    thev 


might  have  pushed  their  way  between  the  Yser 
and  the  Ly.s  on  Dunkirk,  Calais,  and  Boulogne, 
isolated  the  Belgians  on  the  Yser,  and  menaced 
the  left  wing  of  Maud'huy's  armj-. 

Fortunately,  as  was  narrated  in  Chapter 
XLVIIL,  the  right  of  the  German  position 
north  of  the  Lys  was  on  October  13  turned 
by  Byng's  Division  from  Roulers  and  by 
General  d'L^rbal  from  Dimkirk,  and  was  at  the 
same  time  attacked  by  the  British  Cavalry 
Corps  ;  while  the  III.  Corps  from  Hazebrouck 
moved  against  its  centre  and  left.  More- 
over, between  the  Lys  and  the  Aire-Betluuie- 
La  Bassee-Lille  Canal,  the  Germans  were  thrust 
back  by  General  Conneau's  Cavalry  Corps  and 
the  II.  Corps.  As  Lille  was  surrendering,  the 
French  from  Dimkirk  entered  Ypres,  the 
British  Cavalry  Corps  captured  Mont-des-Cats. 
the  western  end  of  the  ridge,  and  the  III.  Corps 
took  Meteren,  south  of  the  ridge.  Sir  Henry 
Kawlinson's  Cavalry  (Byng's  Division)  pushed 
patrols  towards  Comines,  and  on  the  next  day 
(October  14)  passed  through  Ypres  and  occupied 
Kemmel  and  W'ytschaete  at  the  eastern  end 
of  the  ridge,  from  the  remainder  of  which  the 
Germans  were  dislodged  by  the  Cavalry  Corps. 
^rhe  same  day  Messines,  south  of  Wytschaete, 
was  taken  and  the  III.  Corps  entered  Bailleul. 
On  the  15th,  the  day  when  the  Germans  seized 
Ostend,  Sir  John  French  directed  thd  Cavalry 
Corps  and  the  III.  Corps  to  the  Lys,  and  the 
line  of  that  river  from  Aire  to  Arrnentieres  and 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


176 


the  north  bank  to  a  point  five  miles  below 
Armentieres  were  by  sunset  in  tlie  possession 
of  the  Allies. 

On  the  16th  the  Germans  evacuated  Armen- 
tieres, and  on  the  same  date,  while  the  British 
and  French  north  and  south  of  the  Lys  were 
still  continuing  their  offensive,  the  Germans 
attacked  Dixmude  and  the  Battle  of  the  Yser 
began. 

The  left  wing  of  the  Allies  now  stretched  from 
Compiegne  through  Albert,  Arras,  Bethune, 
Armentieres,  Ypres,  Dixmude  to  the  coast  at 
Nieuport-Bains.  As  the  Allies  possessed  the 
command  of  the  sea  the  Germans  could  no 
longer  indulge  in  their  favourite  manoeuvre  of 

4* 

outflanliing  their  enemy,  and  during  the  next 
month  they  were  obliged  to  confine  their  efforts 
against  the  Allied  line  between  the  points 
Nieuport  and  Bethune,  or  between  Bethune 
and  Compiegne. 

The  district  in  whic?i  the  Battles  of  the  Yser 
and  Ypres  took  place  has  been  already  described 
in  broad  outline.  Between  the  Lys  and  the 
Scheldt  the  country  is  mostly  industrial  and 
agricultural,  between  the  Lys  and  the  sea 
agricultural  and  pastoral.  Looking  eastward 
from  the  Montague  de  Kemmel  (512  ft.  high) 
on  the  ridge  of  the  Mont-des-Cats,  to  the  riglit 


are  seen  in  the  distance  the  tall  chimneys  and 
factory  buildings  of  Lille,  south  of  the  Lys.  On 
the  Lille  side  of  the  Lys  the  land  is  a  flat,  and 
in  rainy  weather,  water-logged  plain  sloping 
gradually  upwards  to  the  low  ridge  on  which 
are  the  villages  of  Givenchy,  Aubers,  Fromelles, 
and  Radinghein.  Close  to  Givenchy,  which  is 
two  miles  west  of  La  Bassee,  huge  slag  heaps 
rise  black  against  the  sky.  Radinghem  is  five 
miles  or  so  due  west  of  Lille  and  the  san\e 
dista^nce  due  south  of  Armentieres.  The  La 
Bassee-Lille  Canal  is  beyond  the  ridge. 

Twenty  miles  away,  in  front  of  Kemmel,  is 
Courtrai  on  the  Lys,  and,  to  its  north,  Roulers. 
South  of  the  railway  from  Roulers  to  Ypres  a 
wide  belt  of  woods  extends  from  Wytschaete 
to  Zonnebeke.  In  the  plain  below  to  the  left 
are  seen,  a  little  to  the  east,  the  towers  and 
roofs  of  Ypres,  once  the  capital  of  Western 
Flanders.  Six  miles  to  the  north  of  Ypres  and 
four  miles  east  of  the  canal  from  Ypres  to  the 
Yser  begins  the  forest  of  Houthulst. 

Far  off  the  Yser  winds  through  Dixmude  to 
the  sea,  and  twenty  miles  due  west  of  Dix- 
mude, sixteen  south-west  of  Nieuport-Bains, 
is  Dunkirk. 

Apart  from  the  innumerable  windmills  and 
the  poplar-lined  roads,  the  landscape  north  of 


WHEAT    SEIZED    BY    THE    GERMANS. 


176 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


A    BRITISH    LOOK-OUT    POST. 

the  Lys  as  far  as  the  region  of  Dixmude  has  the 
aspect  of  the  flat  part  of  Essex.  The  ground 
is.  however,  broken  and  rolling  and  there  are 
several  slight  elevations,  for  example  the  hill 
at  Hooglede,  north-west  of  Roulers. 

Round  Dixmude  commence  the  fen  lands  of 
Western  Flanders,  a  network  of  dykes  and 
ditches,  few  of  which  could  be  passed  without 
bridging  material. 

From  the  sea  to  Dixmude  as  the  crow  flies 
is  some  ten  miles  ;  from  Dixmude  to  Ypres 
thirteen  ;  from  Ypres  to  Armentieres  twelve  ; 
and  from  the  Lys  at  Armentieres  to  Bethune 
fifteen  miles — making  a  total  of  about  fifty 
miles.  But  the  actual  length  held  by  the 
Allied  troops  on  October  16  measm-ed  nearly 
sixty  miles,  as  it  followed  the  northern  bank  of 
the  winding  Yser  from  Xieuport  to  Dixmude, 
and  frojn  this  town  round  the  eastern  edge  of 
rhe  forest  of  Houthulst.  From  Nieuport  to 
Dixmude  the  line  was  held  by  the  Belgians, 
aided  by  the  6,000  French  Marines  of  Ronarc'h, 
who  occupied  Dixmude  and  the  neighbourhood 
with  outposts  thrown  well  out  to  the  front. 
From   this   town   it   ran   past   Zonnebeke   and 


dheluvelt,  where  were  Rawlinson's  troops,  to 
VVarneton  on  the  Lys.  In  between  tlie  French 
Marines  and  British  were  the  French  Territorial 
Divisions  and  a  part  of  the  available  French 
Cavalry.  From  Warneton  the  British  Cavalry 
Corps,  tiie  III.  Corps,  Conneau's  Cavalry  Corps 
and  the  JI.  Corps  held  a  curving  line  through 
the  western  outskirts  of  Aubers  to  Bethnne. 

On  October  16  the  actual  po.sition  of  the 
Belgians  was  as  follows  : 

The  2nd  Belgian  Division  was  stationed 
round  Nieuport  ;  to  its  riglit  was  the  1st 
Division  ;  beyond  the  1st  Division  up  to  Dix- 
mude was  placed  the  4th.  Then  came  the 
French  Marines  commanded  by  Rear-Admiral 
Ronarc'h,  with  the  oth  Belgian  Division  in 
support.  The  whole  force  could  not  have  been 
much  over  40,000  men. 

A  patrol  of  tlie  2nd  Lite  Guards  had  been 
driven  from  Staden  on  the  road  from  Roulers 
to  Dixmude,  and  considerable  numbers  of  the 
enemy  were  reported  west  of  Staden  in  the 
forest  of  Houthulst  and  south-east  of  Staden 
at  Oostnieuwkerke.  The  7th  British  Cavalry 
Brigade  on  the  16th  was,  therefore,  directed 
tlirough  Ypres  to  the  south  of  the  forest  of 
Houthulst,  and  till  nightfall  occupied  the  line 
Bixschoote-Poelcapelle. 

The  movements  of  the  French  Tt>rritorials 
and  Cavalry  were  to  have  an  important  bearing 
on  the  defence  of  Dixmude.  As  the  sun  was 
setting  they  relieved  the  7th  Cavalry  Brigade, 
which  was  shifted  in  a  south  easterly  direction 
to  Passchendacle.  At  nightfall  the  front  of  the 
Yser  from  Nieuport  to  Dixmude  was  held  by 
Belgian  detachments,  who  occupied  the  villages 
of  Lombartzyde,  ^lannekensvere,  Schoore, 
Leke,  Keyem,  and  Beerst. 

From  Thourout,  connected  by  a  single  line 
railroad  with  Bruges  and  Roulers  and  by  a 
double-line  railway  with  Ostend,  a  main  road 
runs  to  Ostend.  Other  main  roads  branch  off 
this  highway  and  proceed  to  the  Yser.  The 
villages  of  Beerst  and  Keyem  are  on  the  roads 
to  the  Yser  at  Dixmude.  Between  Schoore  and 
Pervyse  one  of  the  main  roads  crosses  the  Yser. 
\^'est  of  Schoore  still  another  passes  through 
Mannekensvere  to  Nieuport,  while  Lombartzyde 
is  a  mile  east  oF  Nieuport  on  the  coast  road 
to  Ostend. 

So  long  as  the  Belgians  retained  Lombart- 
zyde (and  the  ground  east  of  Nieuport),  Manne- 
kensvere,  Schoore,  Leke,  Keyem  and  Beerst, 
the  Germans  could  not  use  the  roads  to  the 
Yser  which  branch  off  from  the  Thoiu-out-Ostend 
highway,  which  rims  south  through  Roulers  to 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR, 


177 


RUINED    CHURCHES    IN    BELGIUM. 
1.      Interior  of  a  Church  at  Dixmude.  2.     The  Mins  er  at  Nieuport.  3.     Tomb  in  the  Church 

of  Ramscappelle,  wonderfully  preserved  amongst  the  surrounding  wreckage.     4.     The  Church  at  Pervysc. 


178 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAB. 


^lonin,  being  accompanied  al!  the  \va,\-  by  a 
single-line  raUroad.  The  Thoiirout-Ostend  road 
is  not,  however,  the  only  line  from  which  the 
Yser  may  be  approached  from  the  east. 

At  Rouler-s  a  main  road  goes  north-west  to 
Dixmude,  and  this  w^ould  naturally  form  the 
line  of  advance  for  the  Germans  coming  from 
Ghent  to  attack  Ronarc'h. 

Generally  the  German  plan  involved  the 
capture  of  Dixmude,  the  crushing  of  the 
Belgians,  and  a  further  advance  to  turn  the 
Allied  left. 

To  the  south  of  the  Roulers-Dixmude  road 
lies  the  forest  of  Houthulst,  which  could  not  be 
left  by  the  Germans  on  their  flank,  and  whicli 
therefore  became  the  scene  of  man}-  a  fierce 
encoimter  between  the  opposing  forces. 

The  significance  of  the  villages  north  of  the 
Yser  has  been  pointed  out.  Behind  these  from 
Dixmude  to  Nieuport -Bains  was  the  canalised 
river  Yser,  which  is  from  fifteen  to  twenty  feet 
above  the  level  of  the  land  to  the  west  of  it.  It 
has  a  broad  towpath  rimning  all  along  it,  which 
forms  a  fine  rampart.  Between  the  towpath 
and  the  rampart  there  is  a  bank  about  two  feet 
high,  which  is  enough  to  protect  a  man  when 
he  is  firing.  The  canal  moves  in  a  slightly 
concave    cur\'e    from    Dixmude    to    Nieuport. 


About  half  way  between  the  two  towns  it  i^ 
pressed  out  to  the  eastward.  At  each  side  of 
the  ba.se  of  the  loop  thus  formed  there  is  a 
small  village  (Tervaete,  Schoorbakke),  clustered 
round  a  bridge.  Westward  of  the  canal  lie  fiat 
fields,  broken  up  into  farms  and  intersected  by- 
minor  water  channels  ;  and  then  the  embank- 
ment of  the  railway  which  connects  Dixmude 
with  Nieuport  and  is  on  the  average  about  two 
miles  distant  froni  the  canal.  The  embank- 
ment is,  as  it  were,  the  string  of  a  drawn  Vjow 
of  which  the  stave  is  the  canal  and  the  tips 
Nieuport  and  Dixmude.  The  chief  bridges 
over  the  Yser,  so  far  as  the  fighting  now  to  be 
described  is  concerned,  are  at  Nieuport, 
ilannekensvere,  Schoorbakke  and  Tervaete 
(near  Keyem),  and  Dixmude.  Off  the  roads 
the  country  leading  to  these  crossings  was 
liable  to  flood.  The  possession  of  the  bridges 
was,  therefore,  of  importance  to  the  assailants 
for  attack  or  to  the  defenders  for  an  active 
defence.  The  situation  was  like  that  at  the 
bridge  of  Areola  in  1796. 

The  railwaj^  formed  a  second  line  on  which 
the  Belgians  could  oppose  the  Germans  if  they 
crossed  the  canal.  Behind  the  railway  was  the 
high-road,  a  tree-lined  cliaussee,  from  Dixmude 
through  Per\'yse  and  Ramscappelle  to  Nieuport. 


A   GBRMAN    MOTOR    ALTAR. 
The  Archbishop  of  Cologne  on  the  left. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAE. 


IT'J 


LADLING    MUD    OUT    OF    THE    TRENCHES. 


Nienport  and  Dixmude  were  places  of  con- 
siderable interest.  Round  the  former  had  been 
fought  the  "  Battle  of  the  Dunes  "  in  1600  in 
which  the  Dutch  under  ]\Iaiu'ice  of  Orange  had 
defeated  the  Spaniards.  A  Gothic  Cloth  Hall, 
a  fine  church  with  a  massive  tower,  an  Hotel  de 
Ville,  and  the  remains  of  a  Templars'  Castle 
were  the  architectural  featiu-es  of  this  quiet 
little  town  of  some  3,500  inhabitants.  Dixmude 
possessed  a  church  with  a  magnificent  rood-loft, 
and  formed  a  centre  for  the  dairy-farnis  which 
carried  on  a  brisk  trade  in  butter  with  England. 

A  mile  or  so  beyond  Nieuport  was  Nieuport- 
Bains,  where  the  Yser  entered  the  sea.  It  was 
a  small  watering-place  with  a  broad  Digue,  a 
golf  course,  several  hotels,  and  tastefully  built 
villas. 

From  Ostend  to  Dunkirk  along  the  shore 
stretched  the  Dunes — great  heaps  of  sand, 
some  planted  with  trees.  Skirting  the  Dunes 
on  the  south  side  ran  the  canal  from  Dunkirk 
through  Fumes  to  Nieuport. 

Fumes,  where  the  Belgian  reserves  were 
ultimately  stationed,  was  a  town  of  some  0,000 
inhabitants,  with  a  quaint  old  Place.  This,  a 
belfry,  the  choir  of  the  church  of  St.  Walbiu-ga, 
and  the  huge  tower  of  the  church  of  St.  Nicholas 
formed  its  chief  attractions.  It  was  connected 
with  the  Yser  by  the  Canal  de  Loo,  which 
formed  a  third  barrier  to  an  encmv  after  he  had 


crossed  the  Yser  and  the  railway  enibankineut 
between  Dixmude  and  Nieuport. 

A  steam  tramway,  a  canal,  and  high-road 
joined  Furnes  to  Nieuport,  a  high  road  Furnes 
to  Pervyse,  a  railway  and  a  high-road  (through 
Pervyse)  Furnes  to  Dixmude  ;  a  high-road  and 
light  railway  Furnes  to  Ypres. 

Most  of  the  roads  in  this  district  were  usually 
not  wide  enough  to  admit  two  vehicles  to  pass. 

If  they  left  the  roads,  the  Germans  would 
liave  to  fight  their  waj-  across  hedges,  dykes, 
lines  of  polder.s,  willow  thickets,  orchards  and 
gardens,  and  the  marsh 3^  character  of  the  soil 
would  prevent  them  making  {irtificial  cover. 
Trenches  speedily  filled  with  water,  and,  a.s  the 
land  at  high  tide  was  below  sea  level,  the 
Belgians  by  opening  the  s'.uices  could  let  the 
sea  in,  while  the  space  between  the  Yser  and 
the  railway  embankment  might  hv-  flooded  b\- 
closing  up  the  culverts  under  the  railroad  and 
bursting  the  channel  of  tlu^  raised  canal. 
Further,  the  flank  of  cohunns  moving  between 
the  sea  and  Schoore  would  be  exposed  to  fire 
from  the  guns  of  the  Allied  men-of-war. 

The  attacks  on  Dixnuide  or  its  inunediate 
neighbourhood  are  comprehensible,  but,  remem- 
bering that  Dunkirk  was  fortified,  it  is  difficult 
to  understand  the  reasons  for  the  persistent 
German  assaults  on  the  Belgian  position  north 
of    Dixnuide.     One    explanation    that    can    be 


THE     TIMES    HIS'lORY    OF     THE     WAR. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


181 


n2 


18-2 


THI-:     Tl.MHS     HISTORY    OF     THE     WAR. 


MAJOR-GENERAL    F. 


[Swainc. 

C.    SHAW. 


offered  is  that  the  Duke  of  ^^'llrtembel'g  and  his 
advisers  imagined  that  the  Belgians  were 
demoralised.  If  that  were  the  case,  the  German 
leaders  were  speedily  to  be  undeceived. 

There  was  one  point  in  the  Allied  position 
on  the  Yser  which  was  of  cardinal  importance — 
viz.,  Dixmude,  the  possession  of  which  was 
needed  for  any  reallj"-  decisive  advance  of  the 
German  right -flank  forces.  But  mere  posses- 
sion would  not  suffice,  the  power  of  debouching 
from  it  was  necessary,  and  to  acquire  this  the 
ground  round  it  to  the  north,  west  and  south 
had  to  be  swept  clear  of  the  Allies  so  as  to 
permit  a  German  deployment  in  force.  This 
wovild  have  given  the  Kaiser's  leaders  the 
initiative,  and  they  woiild  have  been  able  to 
attack  right,  left,  and  centre,  and  the  Allies,  if 
they  could  not  stem  the  current,  must  have 
retreated  before  them  and  thus  have  exposed 
the  left  wing  of  d'Urbal's  force  to  flank  attack. 

On  the  15th  it  will  be  remembered  that  Rear- 
Admiral  Ronarc'h  and  his  6,000  IMarmes  were 
retreating  from  Thourout  to  Dixmude. 

Near  Eessen  a  battalion  imder  Commandant 
de  Karros  was  left  to  guard  the  roads  which  at 
that  point  debovich  from  Vladsloo  to  the  north, 
from  Roulers  to  the  south-east,  and  from  Poel- 
cappelle  and  the  forest  of  Houthulst  to  the 
south.  Commandant  Mam-os  with  another 
battalion  crossed  to  the  Ypres -Dixmude  road 
and   occupied  Woumen.     The   remaining   four 


l);ii tdlions  with  111'-  machine  gim  company 
entered  Dixmude  about  midday,  and  were 
posted  behind  the  Yser.  A  detachment  was 
placed  near  the  village  of  Beer«t  to  the  north 
of  the  town  and  east  of  the  canal.  South  of 
the  chapel  of  Notre-Daine-de-Bon-Secours 
natural  cover  for  the  artillery  wa.s  found. 

Scarcely  had  the  men  been  billeted  than  they 
were  called  up  to  help  a  company  of  Belgian 
Engineers  to  put  the  outskirts  of  Dixmude  in  a 
state  of  defence.  There  was  not  a  moment  to 
be  lost.  xUready  the  (Germans  were  tlirowing 
a  few  shrapnel  shells  into  tlic  town,  and  in  the 
evening  a  German  armoured  car,  coming  from 
Zarren,  fired  at  the  outposts  in  front  of  Ee.ssen. 

On  reconsideration  Ronarc'h  thought  the 
position  which  he  had  taken  up  too  dangerous. 

Only  forty-nine  years  old  and  the  youngest 
of  the  French  admirals,  he  had  had  experience 
of  land  warfare,  having,  U  ce  Falkenhayn,  fought 
in  China.  He  had  accompanied  the  Seymour 
coliunn  which  had  been  sent  to  succour  the 
European  Legations  besieged  by  the  Boxers  in 
Pekin.  A  taciturn,  meditative  man  of  the 
stamp  of  Joffre,  he  recognized  to  the  full  that 
his  men  were  in  insufficient  numbers  and  that 
the  majority  of  them  were  ill -trained.  It  wa.s 
not  till  the  end  of  September  that  he  had  been 
ordered  to  form  a  Brigade  of  two  regiments 
(six  battalions  and  a  company  of  mitrailleuses). 


OFFICERS    OF    THE    FRENCH    MARINES. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF    THE     WAll. 


1S3 


FRENCH    iMARlNES    WITH    THEIR  TROPHIES    OF    WAR. 


and  Jie  had  had  to  recruit  them  chiefly  among 
ladf!  under  age.* 

His  Marines  had  fought  bravely  at  the  Battle 
of  Melle,  but  he  could  scarcely  have  anticipate  d 
they  would  display  the  amazing  covu-age.  skill 
and  energy  which  they  were  about  to  exhibit. 
The  Belgians  supporting  him  were  wearied  with 
constant  fighting.  To  hold  a  line  so  long  with 
the  forces  at  his  disposal  seemed  bold  almost 
to  temerity. 

Ronarc'h  represented  his  views  to  General 
Michel,  who  was  conimanding  the  Allies  on  the 
Yser,  and  recei\'ed  permission  to  shorten  the 
line  of  defence  round  Dixmude.  The  last 
trains  with  the  munitions  of  the  Belgian  Army 
had  passed  through  to  Fumes  and  there  was 
no  longer  the  need  to  keep  any  considerable 
body  east  of  Dixmude  along  the  railroad. 

Accordingly  the  Admiral  withdrew  his  out- 
posts and  divided  the  defence  of  Dixmude  into 
two  sectors.  In  the  northern  he  placed  Com- 
mandant Delage  with  the  1st  Regiment,  in 
the  southern  Commandant  Varney  with  the 
2nd.  A  battalion  of  the  2nd  was  retained  by 
him  at  the  station  of  Caeskerke,  where  the 
railways  from  Fumes  and  Nieuport  meet.  Of 
the  two  Belgian  batteries  one  was  placed  south 

*  One  of  the  Marines,  Yves  Lebouc,  was  IG  years  old. 
The  youth  of  France  in  this  terrible  war  have  behaved 
with  extraordinary  heroism. 


of  tlie  railroad  to  Furnes,  the  other  north  of 
Caeskerke.  A  telephone  connected  them  with 
the  great  flour  mill  of  Dixmude,  the  concrete 
platform  of  which  had  been  constructed  by  a 
German  firni  before  the  war.  It  was  an  excel- 
lent point  from  which  the  whole  valley  of  the 
Yser  might  be  cannonaded  by  heav\'  artillery, 
and  the  cost  of  building  the  floiu-  mill  was 
doubtless  debited  to  the  German  \A"ar  Office. 
For  the  moment,  however,  it  afforded  a  capital 
post  from  which  the  fire  of  the  Belgian  gmis 
could  be  accurately  directed. 

At  the  crossing  of  the  roads  from  Dixmude 
to  Pervyse  and  Oudecappelle  was  stationed  the 
machine  gun  company.  The  canal  of  the  Yser 
in  the  vicinity  of  Dixmude  was  guarded  by  the 
Belgian  infantry  of  the  5th  Division.  To  the 
south  of  Neucappelle  French  Cavalry  held  the 
road  which  at  Loo  crosses  the  canal  from  the 
Yser  to  Fumes  and  joins  beyond  Loo  tlie 
Fumes-Ypres  highway.  Some  of  the  Cavalry 
which  (Jeneral  d'Urbal  had  boldly  thrown  into 
the  forest  of  Houthulst  had  pushed  as  far  a.>< 
Clercken  to  the  east  of  W'oumen. 

The  efforts  of  the  Gerinans  against  the 
Belgians  and  Ronarc'h's  Marines  on  the  Kith 
were  at  first  confined  to  a  reconnaissance  and 
to  entrenching  themselves  at  Middlekerke  on 
the  Ostend  Digue  and  at  Westende,  which  faces 
Lombartzvde.     A  Taube  had  also   flown  o\cr 


184 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


— "  ~r;;;:eEag^_ : 


DEVASTATION    BY    ARTILLERY    FIRE    IN    BELGIUM    AND    FRANCE. 

1.  The  Church  of  St.  Jean,  Dixmude.        2.  Cottages  in  a  street  at  Nieuport.         3.  A  street  at  Albert. 
4.  Wrecked  house  in  the  flooded  area  near  Ramscappelle.         5.  A  street  in  Pervyse. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


185 


Dunkirk  the  supply  source  of  the  Franco- 
Belgian  Army.  One  bomb  had  been  dropped 
by  its  navigator  on  the  sand,  another  into  the 
•^ea. 

Towards  sunset  from  a  fold  in  the  groxind  near 
Eessen  the  heavy  German  artillery  (10  and 
15  cm.  guns)  shelled  the  French  and  Belgians 
defending  Dixnuide  for  some  time.  Sud- 
denly the  guns  ceased  fire  and  masses  of 
infantry  could  be  perceived  advancing  to  the 
attack.  They  were  repulsed,  but  the  fighting 
went  on  through  the  night  of  the  16th.  About 
midnight  a  desperate  charge  of  the  Germans  was 
successful.  The  approaches  to  the  French 
trenches  w^ere  not  protected  by  barbed  wire, 
and  sheer  weight  of  numbers  told.  The 
defenders  withdrew  to  the  sviburbs  of  the  town 
and  awaited  reinforcements.  At  dawn  a 
counter-attack  was  delivered  and  the  lost 
trenches  re -won. 

No  further  assaults  were  that  day  made  on 
Dixmude,  and  at  11  a.m.  the  German  artillery 
ceased  firing.  "  Afterwards,"  notes  a  Marine 
present  at  the  action,  "  al!  noise  ceases  ;  Dix- 
mude has  suffered  little." 

In  the  com-se  of  the  17th  five  batteries  of 
Belgian  artillery  under  Colonel  Wleschoumes 
were  added  to  the  few  guns  in  position  behind 
Dixmude.  The  Admiral  had  now  at  his  disposal 
seventy-two  pieces.  But  it  must  not  be  for- 
gotten that  the  Belgians  had  no  heavy  artUlery 
equivalent  to  the  German,  and  so  worn  were 
their  field-guns  by  constant  use  that  the  fire 
from  them  was  inaccurate.  Ronarc'h  con- 
nected bj'  telephone  the  new  batteries  with  his 
headquartei's  at  Caeskerke.  He  proposed  to 
keep  them  under  his  own  immediate  direction, 
but  he  generally  authorized  the  gunners  to  fire 
whenever  the  fusillade,  and  particularly  the 
mitrailleuse  -  discharges,  indicated  that  an 
infantry  attack  was  proceeding.  ThLs  day  (the 
17th)  the  advance  posts  of  the  Belgians  in  the 
villages  to  the  east  of  the  Yser  were  also  shelled 
by  the  Germans. 

The  afternoon  of  the  17th  and  the  whole  of 
the  18th  were  spent  in  quiet  by  the  defenders 
of  Dixmude,  w-ho  on  the  18th  were  visited  by 
King  Albert.  "  He  is  a  model  King,"  writes  a 
Marine,  "  I  have  seen  him  in  the  trenches.  He's 
a  real  man." 

The  respite  given  to  Ronarc'h,  which  per- 
mitted him  and  his  Belgian  colleagues  to  put 
Dixmude  in  a  comparatively  complete  state  of 
defence,  ^^■as  due  to  the  offensive  taken  on  the 
17th,   18th  and   19th  by  General  d'Urbal  and. 


DR.   HECTOR   MUNRO. 

to  his  right,  Sir  Henry  Bawlinson,  and,  west  of 
Sir  Henry,  the  British  Cavalry  Corps  and  III. 
Corps. 

The  German  troops  ^^•ho  were  marching 
through  Roulers  on  Dixmude,  and  some  of 
whom  had  driven  the  patrol  of  Life  Guards 
from  Staden  and  entered  the  forest  of  Houthulst 
on  the  16th,  were  the  next  day  attacked  by 
foiu*  French  Cavalry  Divisions  under  General 
de  Mitry.  The  French  cleared  the  forest  of  the 
Germans  and  demonstrated  towards  Roulers 
and  the  road  from  Roulers  to  Dixmude. 

Do  Mitry's  left  stretched  to  Clercken,  north 
of  the  forest  on  the  road  from  Poelcappelle  to 
Dixmude,  and  on  the  18th  Ronarc'h  v\as 
requested  to  assist  in  the  advance  on  Thourout, 
at  which  town,  as  w-ell  as  at  Roulers,  Genertl 
d'Urbal  was  striking,  while  Rawlinson  wns 
moving  on  Menin.  Accordingly  Ronarc'h  .sent 
Commandant  Mauros  towards  Eessen  with  a 
battalion  of  the  2nd  Regiment  of  Marines  and 
two  Belgian  cars  equipped  with  luaohine  guns. 


186 


THE    Turn's    HISTOliY    UF    THE    WAR. 


A  few  corpses  and  dead  horses  on  the  road 
showed  where  the  Germans  had  been.  V\  Ix'n 
the-French  entered  Eessen  they  found  that  the 
enemy  had  decamped. 

Maiiros  halted  at  Ev^ssen,  but  two  regiments 
of  mounted  African  ti-oops,  temporarily  placed 
under  Ronarc'h's  command,  set  out  in  extended 
order  towards  Bovekerke  and  the  woods  of 
Couckelaere.  The  Allies  had  almost  recovered 
the  position  from  Ghistelles  to  Menin  which 
King  Albert  and  his  staff  had  at  first  chosen 
for  defence  and  then  abandoned,  after  the  fall 
of  Ghent. 

Dixmude  had  not  been  attacked  on  Sunday 
(the  18th),  but  while  the  French  were  marching 
against  Thourout  the  Germans  from  the  line 
Thoiu"out-Ostend  attacked  the  Belgian  advance 
posts  from  Lombartzyde  to  Keyem.  The 
battle  began  in  the  morning.  The  Belgians 
fought  with  superb  coui-age,  but  numbers  told, 
and  before  sunset  the  Germans  had  secured 
Mannekensvere  and  Keyem.  If  they  covikl 
cross  the  Yser  west  of  the  former  place  they 
would  turn  the  centre  of  the  Belgian  position 
of  Nieuport,  while  from  Keyem  they  could 
either  march  on  Dixmude  or,  crossing  the 
southern  side  of  the  loop  of  the  Yser,  strike  at 
Pervyse  and  break  the  Belgian  line. 

If  the  east  bank  of  the  Yser  was  to  be  held, 
Keyem  had  to  be  retaken  at  all  costs,  and  the 


Belgian  4th  Division  by  a  brilliant  night  attack 
drove  the  enemy  from  the  village. 

This  success  and  the  repulse  of  the  Germans 
before  Keyem  on  the  next  day  were  psycho- 
logically of  the  highest  value  to  the  cau.se  of 
the  Allies.  ISIany  of  the  Belgians  had  come  to 
believe  that  the  Germans  must  win  in  the  end 
and  they  could  hardly  believe  their  eyes  when 
the  enemy  turned  and  ran.  They  stopped  firing, 
and  shouted  out  in  amazement :  "  See,  see, 
they're  running  !  " 

On  IMonday  the  19th,  the  Germans  received 
the  order  to  cross  the  Yser  "  at  any  cost,"  and, 
to  facilitate  the  attack  on  Dixmude,  columns 
from  Bruges  and  Ghent  were  directed  on 
Roulers.  The  town  was  attacked  from  three 
bides— from  Hooglede  on  the  north-west,  from 
Ardoye  on  the  north-east,  and  from  Iseghem 
on  the  east.  The  artillery  at  these  places 
commenced  bombarding  Roulers  at  noon,  and 
towards  evening  the  enemy  entered  the  town. 
The  French  retired  to  Oostnieuwkerke,  and  the 
road  from  Roulers  to  Dixmude  was  again  in  the 
possession  of  the  Germans,  who  had  not  been 
dislodged  from  Menin  by  Rawlinson.  On  the 
north  and  south  banks  of  the  Lys  the  Allies  had 
made  no  further  progress  of  a  substantial  nature. 

The  enemy  from  the  Thourout-Ostend  front 
also  achieved  a  considerable  success  against  the 
Belgians.     Beerst.    between   Keyem   and   Dix- 


BELGIAN    INFAIViTRV     ON    THE    MARCH. 


THE     TIMES    HISTOI-IY    OE     THE    WAR. 


]S7 


FRENCH    ENGINEERS    REPAIRING    A    BRIDGE. 


iiiude,  was  captvired,  and  desperate  efforts  made 
to  take  Keyem  and  drive  the  Belgian  4th 
Division  over  the  loop  of  the  Yser.  To  save 
that  division  from  destruction  the  French 
Marines  and  the  Belgian  5tli  Division  were 
ordered  to  advance  from  Dixmude  and  recover 
Beerst,  cross  the  road  from  that  village  to 
Thourout,  and  occupj'  the  Praet-Bosch  woods 
to  the  north  of  the  road. 

Supported  by  the  Belgian  5th  Division,  the 
battalion  of  Commandant  Mauros  moved  at 
10  a.m.  from  Eessen  on  Vladsloo  and  Hoograde, 
and  two  battalions  of  Ronarc'h's  reserve 
traversed  Dixmude  and  marched  on  Beerst, 
where  the  Germans  had  barricaded  themselves 
in  the  houses  and  chiirch.  The  ground  in  front 
of  the  village  was  quite  fiat  and  intersected  by 
dykes  overflouing  with  water,  and  the  only 
cover  was  here  and  there  a  leafless  hedge  ;  so 
the  Marines  had  to  advance  slowlj^  crouching, 
r.ieu tenant  Maussion  dc  Cande,  who  incautiously 
.stood  up,  was  struck  down,  and  at  every  moment 
a  Marine  fell  forward  among  the  beetroots. 
Lieutenant  Pertus  had  his  leg  blown  to  pieces 
as  he  was  leading  on  his  company  ;  and 
Lieutenant  de  Blois  was  liit  a  few  minutes  later. 
The  losses  of  Jearmiot's  battalion  were  so 
heavy  that  Pugliesi-Conti's  was  brought  up 
into  the  fight. 

Tliirsting  for  vengeance  and  animated  by  the 


example  of  their  officers,  they  were  determined 
to  perish  rather  than  give  ground.  Following 
Commandant  Varney,  who  A\as  superintending 
the  attack,  the  whole  battalion  pressed  for- 
ward. House  after  house  was  taken,  each  after 
a  terrible  struggle. 

Still  the  fight  proceeded.  The  Admiral  sent 
up  a  fresh  battalion  from  his  reserves  to 
replace  Jeanniot's  sorely  tried  battalion,  which 
was  brought  back  to  Dixmude.  On  the  right 
Mauros  debouched  from  Vladsloo,  whence, 
with  the  aid  of  Belgian  mitrailleuses,  he  had  dis- 
lodged the  enemy.  The  Belgian  5th  Division 
prolonged  the  fighting  front  to  the  right  and 
kept  part  of  its  strength  echeloned  in  rear. 

These  happy  dis portions  soon  produced  good 
results,  and  by  5  p.m.  Beerst  was  carried. 
Night  was  now  falling,  and  the  Admiral  directed 
Commandant  Varney  to  put  the  outskirts  of 
Beerst  in  a  state  of  defence  to  resist  a  possible 
counter-attack.  But  no  sooner  was  work  begun 
than  the  Belgian  Conunander  ordered  Ronarc'h 
to  recall  his  Marines  to  their  original  position 
roiuid  Dixmude.  The  effect  of  the  German 
victory  at  Roulers  had  become  apparent. 
News  had  reached  General  Michel  that  a 
coliunn  was  moving  from  the  east  on  Dixmude. 
At  1 1  p.m.  the  Brigade  of  Marines  reached  its 
cantonments  at  Caeskerke  and  St.  .lacquos- 
CappelU'.     Looking    back,    it    was    aeon    that 


188 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


/sender^/?  \ 


11  Hoogstaede  ^boo 


les 


Kilometres 


0 


12      3      4b 

BATTLE    OF    THE    YSER, 

Showing  approximate  position  of  the  Allies  October  16th  (evening). 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR 


189 


Vladsloo,  which  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the 
Germans,  was  burning  fiercely.* 

The  retirement  of  the  Marines  and  the 
Belgian  5th  Division  rendered  Keyem  untenable. 
Diu"ing  the  night  it  was  occupied  by  the  enemy, 
and  the  4th  Belgian  Division  fell  back  behind 
the  Yser. 

At  the  other  end  of  the  battlefield  the  Ger 
mans  between  Keyem  and  Nieuport  had  been 
heavily  cannonading  the  Belgian  1st  Division, 
while  their  columns  from  Ostend  were  assaulting 
Lombartzyde,  defended  by  the  2nd  Division. 
These  attacks  were  repulsed.  There  can, 
however,  be  small  doubt  that  both  Lom- 
bartzyde and  Nieuport  would  have  fallen  into 
German  hands  but  for  a  new  and,  to  the 
Germans,  unexpected  demonstration  of  the 
naval  supremacy  possessed  by  the  Allies. 

On  Sunday  a  naval  flotilla,  which  included 
three  Monitors,  built  for  the  Brazilian  Govern- 
ment for  river  work,  and  taken  over  by  the 
British  Admiralty,  had  been  dispatched  under 
Rear -Admiral  Hood  to  the  Belgian  coast. 
Consequently  the  Allied  line  on  Monday  had 
rested  not  only  on  the  sea,  but  on  a  mmaber  of 
movable  forts  armed  with  6-inch  guns  equal  to 
the  heaviest  which  the  Germans  then  possessed 
at  this  point.  The  Monitors  being  of  light 
draught  could  approach  close  to  the  shore. 
Aeroplanes,  seaplanes,  and  captive  or  dirigible 
balloons  signalled  to  the  naval  gunners  the 
positions  of  the  German  troops  and  artillery,  f 

*  For  much  of  the  account  of  the  fighting  round 
Dixmude  we  express  our  acknovvledgmenta  to  M.  Le 
GofFic,  whose  lucid  and  interesting  article  in  the  Revue 
des  Deux  Mondes  is  based,  not  only  on  official  reports, 
but  on  the  written  or  oral  evidence  of  Marines  and  others 
who  took  part  in  the  Battle  of  the  Yser. 

t  The  stationary  observation  balloon  was  very  useful 
both  on  sea  and  land.  A  correspondent  of  The  Times 
was  SLibsequently  allowed  to  ascend  in  one  of  the  latter 
and  gives  a  graphic  description  of  the  observations  made 
on  the  occasion. 

"  The  officer  whom  I  accompanied  was  engaged  in 
making  observations  with  a  view  to  discovering  the 
position  of  the  German  batteries. 

"  At  a  height  of  about  200  feet  we  could  follow  all  the 
phases  of  the  battle  which  was  in  progress  along  the  other 
bank  of  the  Yser,  between  Nieuport  and  Dixmude.  In 
particular  we  were  able  to  note  the  effect  of  the  fire  of  the 
British  warships  off  the  coast.       , 

"  With  my  glasses  I  could  see  Ostend  and  the  ruins 
of  several  coast  villages,  including  Westonde,  JMiddel- 
kerke,  and  Lombartzyde.  As  far  as  I  could  see,  not  a 
single  wall  remained  standing  in  the  villages  of  West- 
kerke.  Slype,  and  Novie.  All  this  damage  had  been 
caused  by  the  effective  fire  of  the  British  ships,  which 
ultimately  succeeded  in  dislodging  the  German  forces. 

"  At  8  a.m.  the  engagement  was  in  full  swing,  and  as 
the  air  was  clear  I  had  a  splendid  view  of  what  was 
going  on.  At  8.45  the  observation-officer  discosered 
the  position  of  the  German  guns,  and  so  we  at  once  came 
down." 


The  dead-flat  country  permitted  those  positions 
often  to  be  seen  from  the  masthead.  To  bafile 
the  aim  of  the  German  coast  batteries  the  ships 
moved  on  diagonal  courses  and,  to  escape- 
torpedoes  launched  by  submarines,  at  a  high 
rate  of  speed.  So  close  in  land  did  the  M©nitors> 
and  torpedo  craft  come,  that  their  crews  even 
fired  with  rifles  at  the  enemy.  How  the 
British  flotilla  engaged  the  German  forces  ia 
graphically  described  by  Petty-Officer  Cooper, 
of  H.M.S.  Falcon. 

'*  After  patrolling  the  shores,"  he  says,  with 
reference  to  the  flghting  on  October  27,  but 
which  applies  equally  to  the  earlier  date,  "  the 
Falcon  took  up  a  position  two  miles  off  Nieu- 
port. A  mile  nearer  the  shore  were  the 
Monitors.  They  opened  their  attack,  and  we 
fired  over  them.  We  could  see  nothing  of  the 
batteries  or  the  trenches,  but  we  soon  found  the 
range,  and  were  told  by  our  officers  that  we 
were  dropping  our  shells  right  into  the  trenches. 
On  the  first  day  we  fired  over  1 ,000  shells,  and 
other  guns  were  fired  while  their  ships  were 
proceeding  at  a^  high  speed  to  and  fro  along  the 
coasthne.  The  Germans  brought  to  bear  on  us 
some  of  theii"  heavier  giins  which  they  used  at 
Antwerj),  and  they  dropped  their  shells  roimd 
us.     Several  struck  us,  but  did  little  damage." 

Though  the  British  flotilla  opened  fire  at 
daybreak  on  the  19th,  the  Germans  did  not 
desist  from  their  assaults  on  Lombartzyde  and 
Nieuport.  In  the  morning  <>t'  the  20th  they 
rushed  the  farm  of  Bambuig.  It  was  retfiken, 
but  at  night  was  abandoned  by  the  Belgians.  In 
the  centre  and  on  the  right,  the  enemy,  who  now 
had  gained  Schoore  as  well  as  Mannekensvere, 
Keyem,  and  Beerst,  .-helled  the  Belgians  de- 
fending the  raised  (tanal  of  the  Yser,  and 
launched  cohunns  down  the  Keyem-Dixmude 
and  Eoitlers-Dixmucle  roads  on  Dixmude. 
Hitherto  only  field  guns  had  been  used  by  the 
Germans  against  Dixmude  ;  but  at  this  junctm-e 
heavy  howitzeis  came  up  and  rained  shells  on 
the  town.  General  Meyser's  Belgian  Brigade 
had  been  attached  to  Ronarc'h's  Marines,  the 
trenches  protected  by  barbed  wire  and  pro- 
vided with  head  cover.  Repeated  attacks  of 
the  Germans  were  easily  beaten  off. 

In  Furnes  were  posted  the  Belgian  reserves. 
Before  dusk  Dr.  Hector  Munro's  Field  Hospital, 
which  had  already  done  such  noble  services 
for  the  Allies,  had  arrived.  Dr.  Munro,  Dr. 
Bevis,  and  the  rest  of  the  party  of  twenty-fivo 
doctors  and  nurses,  among  them  Lady  Dorothie 
Feilding  (a   daughter   of   Lord   Denbigh;   were 


I'JO' 


THE    TUIE^    HISTORY    OF     THE    ]yAlL 


busy  converting  a  large  convent  into  a  ba.««^ 
hospital.  The  gas  in  the  town  had  been  cut  off, 
and  the  little  shops  were  lit  up  by  candles  and 
oil  lamps.  Below,  in  the  vaulted  caves, 
scjldiers  were  drinking  soup,  coffee,  or  wine. 
The  place  was  jjacked  with  armoured  and  other 
motor-cars,  military  cycles,  artillery,  and  pro- 
vision wagons.  The  sound  of  the  guns  in  tlic 
distance  was  terrific. 

Wednesday,  the  21st,  was  one  of  the  most 
critical  days  in  the  gigantic  struggle  between 
the  Lys  and  the  sea. 

General  Joffre  himself  was  on  the  spot  to 
direct  the  operations  of  the  Allies.  French 
troops  were  hurrjang  up  to  the  assistance  of  t  he 
Belgians,  and  King  Albert  and  Joffre  reviewed 
the  -IGtli  Chasseurs  in  tlie  Place  of  Furnes. 
The  same  day  he  told  Sir  John  French  that  he 
was  bringing  up  the  9th  French  Army  Corps 
to  Ypres,  and  that  other  reinforcements  would 
follow  later.  It  was  his  intention  with  these 
and  the  Belgian  and  British  troops  to  renew 
the  offensive  ar^d  di'ive  the  Germans  eastward, 
but  he  stated  that  he  would  be  unable  to  com- 
hience  the  forward  movement  until  the  24th. 

But  the  Germans  had  already  thrust  back  the 
Allied  line  south  of  the  Forest  of  Houthulst, 
and  occupied  Poelcappelle  and  Passchendaele. 
Partly  to  relieve  the  pressure  on  Dixmude,  the 
four  French  Cavalry  Divisions  under  General 
de    Mitrv    and    the    two    Territorial    Divisions 


under  General  Bidon.  moved  from  the  canal- 
between  ^ixuiudu  and  Vpres  on  the  Forest 
and  to  the  north  and  south  of  it.  Sir  Uouglaa 
Haig  from  Ypres  was  on  their  right.  He  was 
to  capture  Poelcappelle  and  Passcheiidaele. 
Beyond  Sir  Douglas  was  Kawlinson,  with  the 
7th  Infantrj-  and  the  3rd  Cavalrs^  Divisions. 

Up  to  2  p.m.  the  ad\ance  wa.s  succe.ssful,  bun 
then  the  French  Cavalry  were  ordered  to  retire 
west  of  the  canal  from  Ypres  to  tlie  Yser,  and, 
OM'ing  to  this  and  to  the  German  attacks  on 
Pvawlinson,  Sir  JJougias  was  brought  to  a  stoj) 
on  the  line  Bixschoote-Langemarck-St.  Julien- 
Zonnebeke.  Thenceforth  the  battle  from 
Bethime  to  Xienport  became  an  almost  purely 
defensive  one  on  the  part  of  the  Allies. 

To  return  to  the  operations  on  the  Yser 
during  the  21st.  j'he  German  occupation  of 
Roiilers  and  of  the  forest  of  Houthulst,  coupled 
with  the  failure  of  Rawlinson  to  take  Menin, 
had  enabled  Falkenhayn  from  the  line  Menin- 
Roulers-Thourout-Ostend  to  concentrate  his 
enormous  forces  on  any  point  between  the  Lys 
and  Nieuport.  The  heavy  howitzers  which 
vomited  high-explosive  shells  had  arrived  from 
Antwerp,  but  the  presence  of  the  British  flotilla, 
which  ^^•as  provided  with  guns  as  powerful, 
rendered  it  advisable  for  the  Germans  to  avoid 
the  left  and  attack  the  centre  and  right  of  the 
Belgian  Army. 

At   daybreak   (the    21st)   the   enemy   hurled 


A    FRENCH    BICYCLE    COMPANY, 

The  bicycle  folded  for  marching. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAIL 


191 


THE    SURPRISED    GERMAN    PATROL. 


themselves  on  the  Frencli  Marines  and  Belgians 
round  Dixmude.  Orders  had  been  given  to  the 
gunners  to  level  every  house  in  the  town.*  An 
American  with  the  Germans  remarks  that 
'■'from  a  church  steeple  in  a  village  just  back 
of  the  artillery  trenches  you  could  see  a  con- 
tinual flash  of  bursting  shells  in  Dixmude — 
about  fifty  shells  a  minute." 

Dixmude  was  not  the  only  spot  bombarded. 
From  the  tower  of  the  chiu'ch  of  Furnes  that 
morning  as  far  as  the  eye  coiild  i-each  over  the 
flat  horizon  nothing  was  to  be  seen  except 
bursting  shells  and  bui'ning  villages^  and 
hamlets. 

Eight  separate  attacks  were  made  on  the 
trenches  protecting  Dixmude.  The  (Germans, 
most  of  whom  had  arrived  from  the  Fatherland 
a  few  days  before,  and  some  of  whom  were  mere 
lads  of  only  seventeen  or  eighteen  years,  fought 
with  magnificent  courage,  but  the  French 
Marines  massed  their  machine  guns  in  groups  of 
four,  and  each  column  was  in  a  few  seconds 
reduced  to  a  mass  of  corpses,  writhing  wovuided, 
and  panic-stricken  fugitives.  Had  it  not  been 
for  the  deluge  of  shells  on  the  trenches  and  on 


Dixmude  the  struggle  would  have  degenerated 
into  a  one-sided  massacre. 

As  it  was  the  heroism  displayed  by  Ronarc'h's 
Marines  and  the  Belgian  infantry  who  beat  off 
the  furious  assaults  of  the  Kaiser's  troops  cannot 
be  overestimated.  Under  a  sky  which  litei-ally 
rained  shrapnel  and  fragments  of  common  shell 
they  continued  to  fight  with  unsurpassable 
gallantry.  What  they  endured  may  be  faintly 
understood  from  the  narratives  of  two  war- 
correspondents,  ]\Ir.  Ashmead-Bartlett  and  Mr. 
Philip  Gibbs,  who  accompanied  Dr.  Hector 
3Iimro  on  that  day  into  Dixmude.* 

Quite  early  Belgian  ambulances  had  come 
uj)  to  the  improvised  hospital  in  Furnes  laden 
with  wounded.  In  the  courtyard  of  the  con- 
vent two  motor  ambulances  and  fom*  car.s  wei'« 
getting  ready  to  move  towards  the  firing  line. 
A  start  was  made  at  noon.  One  of  the  cars  was 
driven  by  Lieutenant  de  Broqueville,  the  son  of 
the  Belgian  Minister  of  War.  Lady  Dorothie 
Feilding,  Miss  Chisholm,  Dr.  Hector  Munro,  and 
an  American  (Mr.  Gleeson)  were  of  the  party. 

*  These  nnrrativcs  appeared  in  tlie  Daily  Telegraph 
and  the  Daily  Chronicle. 


192 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


FRENCH    SENEGALESE    SOLDIERS. 


Two  British  chauffeiu's  drove  the  motor  ambu- 
lances. 

Winding  their  way  through  the  streets  of 
Furnes  crowded  with  soldiers  and  wagons,  the 
cars  and  ambulances  passed  into  the  open 
country.  The  sun  was  shining,  and  the  long, 
straight  lines  of  poplars  between  the  low-lying 
fields  indicated  the  roads  that  traversed  the 
marshes  and  meadows.  As  they  proceeded  they 
met  a  squadron  of  Belgian  cavalry.  The  men 
were  haggard  and  dirty,  but  looked  hard  and 
resolute.  Next  they  encountered  groups  of  the 
cheerful  Belgian  infantry,  columns  of  French 
troops,  and  ever-roiling,  seemingly  endless 
streams  of  motors  of  every  make  and  design. 
Here  and  there  the  military  gave  way  to  tlie 
civilian  element.  Old  women,  young  women 
with  babies  and  children,  and  peasants  trudged 
slowly  away  from  the  scenes  of  carnage.  A 
column  of  German  •  prisoners  escorted  by 
mounted  men  marched  past  to  the  rear.  "  All 
of  them  had  a  wild,  famished,  terror-stricken 
look  "  in  their  faces.  Four  months  before  these 
unfortunate  men  had  been  peaceable  citizens, 
members  of  a  civilized  community. 

Emerging  from  Oudecappelle,  Dr.  Munro's 
party  came  upon  the  battlefield. 

"  Away  across  the  fields,"  saj'^s  Mr.  Gibbs, 
"  was  a  line  of  villages,  with  the  town  of  Dix- 
mude  a  little  to  the  right  of  us.  .  .  .     From 


each  little  town  smoke  was  rising  in  separate 
columns,  which  met  at  the  top  in  a  great  pall 
of  smoke,  as  a  heavy  black  cloud  cresting  above 
the  light  on  the  horizon  line.  At  every  moment 
this  blaclcness  was  brightened  by  puffs  of  electric 
blue,  extraordinarily  vivid,  as  shells  burst  in 
the  air.  .  .  .  From  the  mass  of  houses  in  each 
town  came  gusts  of  flame,  following  the  ex 
plosions,  which  sounded  with  terrific  thudding 
shocks.  Upon  a  line  of  15  kilometres  there  was 
an  incessant  cannonade,  and  in  every  town 
there  was  a  hell.  The  farthest  villages  were 
already  alight.  I  watched  how  the  flames  rose 
and  Vjecame  great  glowing  furnaces,  terribly 
beautiful." 

Compared  with  such  spectacles  what  were 
the  greatest  battles  of  the  past  ?  From  Dix- 
mude  round  the  forest  of  Houthulst  to  the 
Lys,  from  the  Lys  to  the  slag  heaps  near  La 
Bassee,  from  La  Bassee  through  the  battered 
Arras  to  the  woods  of  Compiegne,  from 
Compiegne  to  ihe  Meuse,  and  from  the  Meuse 
to  the  Jura  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  were 
killing  and  maiming  each  other  under  such 
earthquake  conditions.  The  horrors  on  the 
plain  of  the  Scheldt  were  being  facsimiled  on 
the  Niemen,  in  the  plains  of  Poland  and  Galicia, 
among  the  Carpathians,  and  on  the  Danube. 
At  the  eastern  extremity  oi  Asia  cannon  as 
powerful     as     almost     any    in     Europe     were 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


193 


belcliing  explosives  at  Japanese,  British  or 
Germans. 

The  Belgian  artillery  had  been  apparently 
silenced,  and,  on  the  Yser,  the  agents  of  lirupp 
had  nothing  to  impede  them  in  their  diabolic 
work.  Tlie  road  from  Oudecappello  to  Dixmude 
was  under  the  fire  of  the  German  howitzers. 
Every  minute  on  or  near  the  thoroughfare  a 
great  pall  of  black  smoke  rose  up,  leaving  a 
dark  cavity  in  which  a  couple  of  horses  might 
have  been  buried  side  by  side.  One  of  the  huge 
shells  had  burst  on  a  Belgian  battery.  "  All 
six  horses  of  one  of  the  guns,"  says  Mr.  Ashmead- 
Bartlett,  "  had  been  blown  into  mangled  heaps. 
Their  remains  lay  scattered  about  the  road  like 
badly  cut  joints  suddenly  thrown  about  by  the 
overturn  of  a  gigantic  butcher's  cart."  A 
Belgian  gunner  had  been  cut  in  two,  and  amidst 
fragments  of  dead  horses  were  biscuits,  tinned 
meats,  coffee,  sugar.  Until  the  debris  had  been 
cleared  from  the  road  it  was  impossible  to 
proceed  further. 

At  last  the  way  v/as  open  to  the  brave  little 
partj^  and  the  ambulances  and  cars  made  a 
dash  for  Dixmude.  They  seemed  to  be  rushing 
into  a  burning  furnace.  In  the  outskirts  of  the 
town  were  the  French  reserves. 

Then  they  entered  Dixmude  itself.  JMr. 
Aslunead-Bartlett,  who  had  been  through  the 


Russo-Japanese  and  Balkan  Wars,  has  left  his 
impressions  of  Dixmude  as  it  appeared  on  the 
afternoon  of  October  21,  1914  : 

Well,  I  was  all  through  the  siege  of  Port  Arthur,  and 
I  happened  to  be  in  Reiins  when  the  Germans  destroyed 
the  Cathedral.  At  Port  Arthur  the  bombard ments  were 
terrible,  but  then  the  Japanese  gradually  worked  their 
way  towards  the  forts,  and  you  had  deep  trenches  which 
gave  you  some  cover.  At  Reims  you  were  fairly  safo 
if  you  kept  away  from  the  immediate  neighbourhood  of 
the  Cathedral,  but  at  Dixmude  it  was  Hell. 

The  town  is  not  very  big,  and  what  it  looked  like 
before  the  bombardment  I  cannot  say.  But  the  point 
is  this  :  An  infuriated  German  army  corps  were  con- 
centrating the  fire  of  all  the  held  guns  and  heavy 
howitzers  on  it  at  the  same  time.  There  was  not  an 
inch  which  was  not  being  swept  by  shells.  There  was 
not  a  house,  as  far  as  I  could  see,  which  had  escaped 
destruction.  The  whole  scene  was  so  terrible,  so  ex- 
citing, and  passed  in  such  a  dream,  that  it  has  left  only  a 
series  of  pictures  on  my  mind. 

The  ghastly,  inhunaan  character  of  modem 
warfare  and  the  superhuman  qualities  displayed 
by  the  m^Tiads  of  soldiers  and  civilians  who 
have  been  subjected  by  the  Kaiser  and  the 
conspiring  castes  in  Germany  and  Austria - 
Hungary  to  the  ordeal  by  fire  and  explosion, 
should  be  brought  home  to  the  conscience  of  the 
civilized  world. 

Says  Mr.  Gibbs  : 

We  came  into  Dixmude.  It  was  a  fair-sized  town, 
with  many  beautiful  buildings  and  fine  old  houses  in  the 
Flemish  style — so  I  am  told.  When  I  saw  it  for  the 
first  and  last  time  it  was  a  place  of  death  and  horror. 
The    streets    through    which    we    passed    were    utterly 


GERMANS    IN    A    TRENCH    ON    THE    YSER. 


194 


THK    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


dosorted  and  wrecked  from  end  to  end  n«  tlioiigli  by  an 
eartliquako.  Incessant  explos-ions  of  sliel!  fire  crashed 
down  upon  the  walLs  wliicli  still  stood.  Great  ga.shes 
opened  in  the  walls,  which  then  toppled  and  fcli. 

A  roof  came  tumbling  down  with  an  appalling  clatter. 
Like  a  house  of  cards  blown  by  a  puH  ol  wind  a  little 
shop  suddenly  collapsed  into  a  mass  of  ruins. 

Here  and  there,  farther  into  the  town,  we  :^aw  living 
figures.  They  ran  swiftly  for  a  moment  and  then  dis- 
appeared into  dark  caverns  under  toppling  porticoes. 
They  were  Belgian  soldiers. 

We  were  now  in  a  side  street  leadiii;^  into  the  town 
hall  .-quare.  It  seemed  impossible  to  pass,  owinj;  to  the 
wreckage  strewn  across  the  road. 

"Try  to  take  it."  said  Dr.  ^Iimro,  who  was  sitting 
beside  the  chauffeur. 

We  took  if,  bumping  over  the  high  debris,  and  then 
swept  round  into  the  square.  It  was  a  spacious  place 
with  the  town'hall  at  one  side  of  it,  or  what  was  left  of  the 
town  hall.  There  was  only  the  splendid  .shell  of  it  left, 
Butlieient  for  us  to  see  the  skeleton  of  a  noble  building 
which  -had  once  been  the  pride  of  Flemish  craftsmen. 
Kven  as  we  turned  towards  it  parts  of  it  were  falling  upon 
the  ruins  already  on  the  ground.  [  .saw  a  great  pillar 
tean  forward  and  then  topple  down.  A  mass  of  masonry 
crashed  down  from  the  portico. 

Some  stiff,  dark  forms  lay  among  the  fallen  stone.s. 
They  were  dead  soldiers.  I  liardlj'  glanced  at  them,  for 
we  were  in  search  of  living  now. 

The  cars  were  brought  to  a  halt  outside  the  building 
anil  we  all  climbed  down.     I  lighted  a  cigarette  and  I 


noticed  two  of  tlie  otlier  men  fumble  for  matches  for  tho 
same  purpose.      We  wanted  something  to  steady  us. 

'J'here  wa.s  never  a  moment  when  shell  fire  was  not 
bursting  in  that  square  about  us.  The  .shrapnel  bullets 
wiiijiped  the  stone>. 

The  enemy  was  making  a  target  of  the  Hotel  de  \ille, 
and  dropping  their  sliells  with  dreaulful  exactitude  on 
either  side  of  it. 

1  glanced  towards  a  flaring  furpace  to  the  right  of  the 
building.     There  was  a  wonderful  glow  at  the  heart  of  it. 

y\r.  Ashinead-Bartlett  shows  us  the  interior 
of  the  Hotel  de  Viile  of  Dixniiide: 

In>ide  the  hall  was  a  scene  of  horror  and  chaos.  It  was 
lulled  with  loaves  of  bread,  bicv'clcs,  and  dead  soldiers. 
1  have  never  seen  so  many  bicycles.  I  suppose  .some 
cyclist  troop  had  left  them  here  on  their  way  to  the 
trenches.  We  rushed  down  to  the  cellars  and  dragged 
up  the  wounded,  who  were  all  lying  down  cases,  and  had 
to  be  placed  on  stretchers,  which  seemed,  under  the 
circumstances,  to  take  an  endless  lime.  All  the  while 
the  shells  were  crashing  overhead,  and  the  bullets 
whistling  through  the  square.  Another  officer  ran  up, 
and  told  De  Broqueville  tha:  there  were  some  more 
wounded  in  another  building.  De  Broqueville  ran  off 
and  disappeared  down  a  side  street. 

Loading  the  ambulances  was  slow  work,  but  at  length 
it  was  completed.  We  were  all  ready,  and  only  loo 
anxious  to  depart,  when  we  disco\  ered  that  De  Broque- 
\  ille  liad  not  returned.  We  waited  several  minutes. 
He  did  not  come.  Then  there  was  a  terrific  crash,  and  a 
shell  hit  the  Hotel  de  Villc  just  aboN  c  our  heads,  bringing 
down  more  bricks  and  mortar. 

^I.  Maeterlinck,  the  illu.strious  Belgian  author, 
who  h;^s  l\andled  the  French  language  %\ith  the 
skill  of  an  Anatole  France,  has  drawn  a.  hopeful 
deduction  fro)n  scenes  like  these.  "  One  of  the 
consoling  surprises  of  this  \sar,"  he  say?,  "  is 
the  unlooked  for,  .and,  so  to  speak,  universal 
lieroisjn  which  it   has  revealed  among  all  tiie 


ST.    PIERRE    RAILWAY    STATION,    GHENT. 
Arrival  of  the  British. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


195 


nations  taking  part  in  it."  The  Germans  who 
had  studied  luunanit}-  witii  meticulous  care, 
liad  imagined  that  the  Krupp  inventions  would 
paralyse  the  spirits  of  their  adversaries.  For 
forty  years  they  had  been  accmnalating  un- 
exampled stores  of  materials  for  the  destruction 
of  human  bodies.  They  were  prepared  to  use 
them  in  tlie  same  spirit  that  Nero  had  used  his 
lions  and  his  pitch  against  the  Early  Christians. 
They  imagined  that  religion  had  lost  its  hold 
over  Belgians,  French,  and  British,  and  they 
confidently  expected  to  terrorize  the  comfort- 
loving  populations  of  Western  Em-ope  into 
submission.     They  were  mistaken. 

As  the  sun  was  setting  the  Germans  delivered 
a  final  attack.  They  atteinpted  to  carry 
Dixmude,  and  they  crossed  the  Yser  south  of 
the  town.  The  village  of  tSt.  Jacques  Cappelle 
became  the  centre  of  a  violent  combat. 

Such  of  the  Belgian  batteries  as  liad  not  been 
put  out  of  action  opened  fire  on  the  German 
inJantry.  The  German  artillery  redoubled  its 
fire,  and  then  (leased.  Shouts  which  sounded 
like  "  Ja,  Ja,"  and  loud  cheers  were  hePord. 
The  Germans  wei'e  charging  with  the  baj'onet. 
Over  the  advancing  infantry  the  Belgian  shells 
burst  in  groups  of  red  flame.  The  "  pat-pat - 
pat-pat-par  "  of  the  machine  guns  showed  that 
streams  of  lead  were  being  poiu"ed  into  the 
yelling  masses,  thiruied  e\ery  moment  by  the 
repeating  rifles  of  the  French  and  Belgian 
soldiers.  The  cheers  were  rej)laced  by  shrieks  ; 
the  attack  came  to  a  standstill,  those  Germans 
who  had  escaped  death  or  wounds  sullenly 
retired,  and  the  shelling  from  the  east  of  the 
canal  recommenced. 

It  was  now  seven  p.ni  and  quite  dark.  The  scene  was 
majestic  in  tlie  extreme.  Di.xmude  was  a  red  furnace. 
The  flames  shot  upwards,  showing  clouds  of  white  stnoke 
above.  St.  Jacques,  farther  south,  was  a  Waller 
furnace.  All  along  the  lino  the  shells  were  no  longer 
bursting  in  clouds  of  white  and  black  smoke.  All  had 
put  on  their  blood-red  mantles.  Close  at  hand  every- 
thing wa.s  bathed  in  inky  darkness;  farther  off  the 
burning  towns  and  buildings  showed  up  clearer  than  they 
had  done  during  the  day. 

liehind  Dixuuide  infantry  wore  busily  engaged  con- 
structing fresh  trenches.  I  looked  back  on  this  awful 
scene  for  the  last  time.  As  far  as  the  eye  could  stretch 
the  horizon  was  a  purple  red  from  the  burning  homes 
of  thousands  of  haiinless  and  peaceful  dwellers  who 
are  now  poverty-stricken  refugees  in  England  and  France. 
In  thi-;  district  not  a  villaga  or  a  hamlet  has  escaped.* 

Thus  the  frantic  (>fiorts  of  the  Germans  to 
seize  Dixmude  had  failed.  Away  to  the  left, 
at  5  p.m.,  a  violent  assault,  preceded  by  hours 
of  shelling,  had  been  made  from  Schoor  on 
Schoorbakke,  a  village  a  little  to  the  north  of 

*  Mr.  Ashmead-Bartlett. 


LADY    DOROTHIE    FEILDING. 

the  loof)  in  the  Yser  Canal,  l^his  attack  had 
been  repiil.sed  with  frightful  lo.sses  to  the  enemy. 
By  Wednesday  night  the  Gennans  were  still 
on  the  east  bank  of  the  Yser  between  Dixmude 
and  Nieuport- Bains:  the  canal,  in  places,  and 
the  dykes  and  ditches  were  choked  with  their 
dead  or  expiring  wounded. 

So  far,  the  sole  assistance  reccuved  by  the 
Belgian  Army  had  been  from  Ronarc'h's 
Breton  IMarines  and  the  guns  of  the  Allied 
flotilla.  Joffre  had  kept  the  lUtli  Chasseurs 
in  reserve.  For  one  more  day  the  wearied 
Belgians  and  the  French  Marines  wen;  un- 
assisted to  hold  the  line  of  the  Yser. 

On  Thursday,  tlie  22nd,  the  Germans  gave 
particular  attention  to  the  section  of  the  battle- 
field north  of  Dixmude.  The  area  in  the  looj) 
of  the  Yser  between  Tervaete  and  Schoorbaldie 
was  swept  by  a  hurricane  of  shells,  and  the  canal 
crossed  at  Tervaeto.  A  coimter-attack  bj'  the 
Belgian    1st   Division   was   tuisuccessful.      The 


196 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    W.iR. 


GROSSING    A    STREET    UNDER    FIRE, 


troops  were  rallied  and  ordered  again  to  charge. 
This  time  the  Germans  were  literallj'  driven  into 
the  canal.  At  Sehoorbakke  the  Belgians  re- 
pulsed the  enemv  and  pursued  them  towards 
Schoor,  while  the -Allied  flotilla  continued  steam- 
ing up  and  dowTi  firing  at  the  Gerntan  trenches 
and  batteries  on  the  coast  and  some  distance 
inland.  British  aviators  circled  over  the  flat 
country,  which  was  partly  flooded,  to  give  the 
range.  The  windows  of  Sluis,  on  the  Dutch 
frontier,  were  shaken,  and  the  people  there 
listened  to  what  seemed  a  distant  thunder- 
storm. Fresh  troops  were  passing  hour  by 
hour  through  Bruger  to  reinforce  the  German 
front,  and  the  hea^^iest  ordnance  was  being 
transported  to  assist  the  German  batteries  at 
Middelkerke,  where  a  German  General  and  his 
staff  had  been  killed  b\'  a  British  shell  in  the 
duel  with  the  Allied  flotilla.  From  Ostend  all 
available  soldiers  had  been  jjushed  westwards, 
and  the  hotels  were  being  filled  with  wounded. 

On  the  evening  of  the  22nd  the  people  of 
Furnes  witnessed  a  sight  which  must  have  filled 
them  with  pride. 

Two  battalions  of  the  1st  Belgian  Division — 
the  9th  of  the  line  and  the  2nd  Chasseurs— had, 
in  view  of  the  French  reinforcements  which  were 
to  arrive  on  the  morrow,  been  relieved  from  the 
trenches.  They  were  Brussels  and  Liege  men 
who  had  held  the  gajjs  between  the  forts  at 
I-iege  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  and  had  won 


for  themselves  a  fine  reputation.  At  about 
7  p.m.  they  mai'ched  into  Furnes,  dead  tired 
and  covered  with  mud,  but  singing  the  Mar- 
seillaise at  the  top  of  their  voices.  The  band 
of  the  Chasseurs  played  "  Sambre  et  Me  use." 
Everybody  turned  out  to  watch  them,  and  they 
were  given  an  ovation. 

A  few  hours  later  the  absence  of  these  brave 
men  from  the  Yser  must  have  been  regretted. 
Reinforcements  had  reached  the  enemy,  They 
were  flung  across  the  canal  and,  during  the 
night,  took  Tervaete.  They  brought  with 
them  numerous  machine  guns  to  enfilade  the 
Belgians  in  the  loop  of  the  Yser.  Simul- 
tanopusly  under  cover  of  the  night  which,  to 
some  extent,  protected  them  from  the  fire  of 
the  Allied  warships,  the  Belgian  2nd  Division 
before  Nieuport  and  round  Lombartzyde  was 
subjected  to  a  succession  of  desperate  on- 
slaughts. The  Belgians  \\>^re,  however,  well 
provided  with  mitrailleuses,  and  the  attackers 
were  mowed  down.  Among  these  were  poor 
youths  from  the  German  schools  and  univer- 
sities. One  of  them,  a  bright  lad  who  was 
tended  by  the  British  nurses  at  Fumes, 
spoke  bad  French  very  politely.  He  had  been 
wounded  in  the  foot,  and  would  be  lame  for  life. 

Help  for  the  sore-tried  Belgians  was  at  hand. 
Joffre  had  railed  up  from  Reims  one  of  the 
finest  of  the  French  Divisions,  the  42n(i. 
Se\cral  batteries  of  heavy  howitzers  were  also 


THE     TIMES    HISTOFY     OF     THE    WAR. 


197 


coming  up.  On  Frid?.y  the  23rd,  General 
Grossetti  with  this  Division  was  sent  to  reHe\<' 
the  Belgian  2nd  Division  round  Xieuport,  which 
had  lost  Lombartzj-de  and  was  to  be  brought 
back  into  reserve.  Nieuport  and  the  Belgian 
trenches  behind  St.  Georges  were  being  bom- 
barded, and  Grossetti  coald  only  pass  his  men 
in  small  groups  across  the  Nieuport  bridges. 
Not  till  evening  did  the  P'rench  occupy  the 
trenches  of  the  Belgian  2nd  Division.  Mean- 
while, south  of  Nieuport,  the  Germans  were 
pressing  the  advantage  gained  by  them  during 
the  night  of  the  22nd.  They  swarmed  into  the 
loop  of  the  Yser,  and  the  Belgian  1st  and  4th 
Divisions  were  pushed  back  towards  the  railway 
embankment  between  Pervyse  and  Ramscap- 
pelle. 

During  the  day  the  heavy  French  howitzers, 
which  were  now  in  position,  had  been  dropping 
their  high  explosive  shells  on  the  furthest  gun 
emplacements  of  the  Germans,  and  the  enemy's 
commander  perceived  that  there  w-as  no  time 
to  be  lost  if  victory  was  to  be  achieved.  A 
huge  cigar-shaped  captive  balloon  had  been 
sent  up  to  a  great  height,  and  its  occupants 
vainly  endeavoured  to  locate  the  French 
howitzers.  Between  the  howitzers  and  the  guns 
of  the  Flotilla  the  situation  of  the  Germans 
was  becoming  every  moment  more  dangerous. 
That  day  German  officers  in  Ostend  had  been 
unpleasantly  reminded  of  the  precarious  teniu-e 
on  which  they  possessed  the  towTi.  Fifty  of 
them  were  lunching  at  the  Hotel  Majestic,  one 


of  those  imposing  structures  which  during  the 
last  quarter  of  a  century  had  been  erected 
wherever  pleasure-seekers  congregate.  The 
restaurant  was  one  of  the  most  elegant  in 
Europe.  To  the  white  and  gold  walls  were 
attached  delicately  framed  mirrors.  Chandeliers 
with  their  glittering  facets  of  cut  glass  hung 
from  the  ceiling.  The  floor  was  covered  with 
rich  red  Brussels  carpets,  and  over  them 
waiters  glided,  serving  their  unwelcome  visitors 
with  commandeered  delicacies  and  the  most 
expensive  wines.  Here  and  there  groups  were 
standing  about  chatting.  At  a  window  in  the 
eastern  half  of  the  room  sat  a  naval  doctor  with 
the  adjutant  of  the  brigade  to  wliich  both 
belonged. 

Meanwhile  from  the  British  squadron,  four 
or  five  miles  in  the  offing,  a  torpedo-boat 
destroyer  was  swiftly  approaching  the  shore. 
Another  followed  in  its  wake.  The  pace  at 
which  they  were  going  was  shown  by  the 
masses  of  foam  at  their  bows.  At  the  end  oT 
the  Rue  du  Cerf,  which  slopes  up  to  the  great 
Digue,  Admiral  von  Schroder,  who  had  observed 
their  approach,  was  directing  men  of  the  naval 
brigade  to  place  two  light  guns,  the  only  artillery 
available.  With  feverish  haste  the  gims  were 
pointed  and  fired  at  the  first  boat.  Two  shells 
fell  close  to  it,  and  the  vessels  were  promptly 
swung  round.  Their  guns  flamed  out.  The 
first  British  shells  hit  the  water  and  struck  the 
sea  wall  ;  then  two  of  them  crashed  throng) i 
the   windows   of   the   restaurant   of   the  Hotel 


GERMANS    AT    TARGET    PRACTICE. 


198 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


\  /      N  K    V.' 


GERMANS    FILLING    A    BALLOON    WITH    GAS    CONCEALED    BENEATH    A 

HAYSTACK. 


Majestic,  and  fell  in  the  midst  of  the  festive 
party. 

The  second  of  these  struck  the  doctor,  who 
with  his  companion  had  risen  from  table  to  seek 
a  safer  spot,  right  in  the  middle  of  the  back  and 
blew  him  to  pieces. 

Dr.  Sven  Hedin,  the  celebrated  Swedish 
traveller,  who  later  inspected  the  scene,  .paints 


BRITISH    SOLDIER    PUMPING    OUT 
WATER    FROM    A    TRENCH. 


in  "  A  People  in  Arms  "  a  realistic  picture  of 
the  havoc  wrought  by  the  two  shells. 
"  Splinters  of  them,"  ho  says,  "  had  rent 
gaping  holes  in  walls  and  ceilings.  The  plaster 
ornaments  had  fallen  and  lay  in  ruins,  and  the 
carpet  almost  disappeared  beneath  their  heaA'v 
white  dust.  The  windows  had  been  shivered 
to  powder  and  the  mirrors  had  been  burst  into 
all  kind  of  curious  star  shapes  whose  fragments 
threatened  to  fall  at  the  least  touch.  Tables 
and  chairs  were  smashed  to  atoms,  the  table- 
cloths rent  to  ribbons." 

One  of  the  killed  doctor's  legs  had  been  blown 
under  a  table  ;  his  head  was  in  a  pool  of  blood, 
and  "  the  rest  of  him  was  spattered  about  the 
wnlls,  ceiling,  and  tablecloths." 

With  his  base  at  Ostend  liable  to  be  reduced 
to  the  condition  of  Dixmude,  with  Grossetti's 
Division  in  Xieuport,  with  liis  rear  and  flank 
imder  the  fire  of  the  guns  of  the  British  and 
French  warships  and  from  the  west  by  the 
heavy  howitzers,  the  Duke  of  Wurtemberg 
during  the  night  of  the  23rd-24th  directed  no 
less  tha.n  fourteen  assaults  on  Dixmude.  If 
Dixmiide  could  be  taken  he  mieht  hope  to  turn 
the  Belgians  between  PervyseandRaiuscappelle, 
to  capture  Fiumes  and  drive  the  Belgians  and 
Grossetti's  Division  into  the  sea,  and,  crossing 
the  Yser  where  it  is  an  uneanalised  stream  of 
little  breadth  or  depth,  fall  upon  the  left  wing 
and  rear  of  the  Allied  Ai'my  deployed  between 
Dixmude  and  La  Bassoe. 

Fortunatelv     Ronarc'h's     Marines     and    the 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


199 


Belgian  5th  Division  held  firm.  Every  assault 
was  beaten  off,  and  when  day  broke  on  the  24tli 
the  trenches  and  ruins  of  Dixmude  were  still  in 
the  hands  of  the  Allies.  The  Belgian  Battle 
of  the  Yser  had  closed  ;  the  French  Battle 
of  the  Yser  was  opening. 

No  account  of  this  battle  would  be  complete 
without  an  attempted  appreciation  of  the  debt 
which  the  Allies  owe  to  the  Belgian  Army  and 
Ronarc'h's  Marines.  They  had  held  at  bay  a 
vastly  superior  body  of  German  troops  flushed 
with  victory,  animated  by  the  highest  patriotism 
and  supported  by  artillery  which  produced  the 
greatest  physical  and  moral  effects.  Fen  country 
in  October  is  always  unpleasant,  cold  mists  had 
covered  the  land,  and  heavy  rain  had  fallen  at 
intervals.  At  places  the  men  had  fought  in 
trenches  half  filled  with  water,  and  the  straw 
on  which  those  in  the  open  slept  was  never  dry. 
For  days  many  of  them  had  ta-sted  no  hot  food 
or  drink.  At  night  they  were  forbidden  under 
penalty  of  death  to  smoke,  because  a  glimmer 
would  have  betrayed  the  position  to  the  pointers 
of  the  German  guns.  The  stench  from  the 
canal,  into  which  the  German  dead  were  thrown, 
was  almost  unbearable.  Often  the  Belgians  were 
.separated  from  the  enemy's  sharpshooters  by 
not  more  than  fifty  feet,  and  it  was  death  to 
rise  for  a  moment  to  stretch  oneself. 

The  men  in  the  houses  of  Dixmude  and 
Nieuport  or  in  the  villages  were,  if  possible, 
worse  off.  With  modern  range-finders  towns 
and  villages  are  shell-traps,  and  the  bursting 
of  high-explosive  shells  among  buildings  is  far 
more  terrible  than  the  explosion  of  a  shell  in 
the  open,   for  if  pieces   of  the  shell   miss   the 


THE    ARMOURED    LOOK-OUT    MAN. 

occupants  of  a  room,  the  chances  are  that  they 
Mill  be  killed  by  falling  beams,  girders,  bricks 
and  mortar.  If  they  have  taken  refuge  in 
cellars,  they  may  find  themselves  buried  alive. 

That  in  such  surroundings  the  Belgians  and 
the  French  Marines  should  have  kept  the  line 
of  the  Yser  for  over  a  week  was  a  feat  which 
will  always  be  remembered. 


BELGIAN    SOLDIERS    ON    THE    MARCH. 


200 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GERMAN    MACHINE    GUN    SECTION. 
On    the   Coast. 


The  Belgians  had  most  nobly  answered  to 
Joffre's  call  upon  them  to  secure  the  line  of  the 
Yser  and  its  bridge-heads  for  48  hours.  Since 
the  night  of  the  16th  they  and  Ronarc'h's 
Marines  had  struggled  witli  a  force  at  least 
double,  and  probably  treble,  their  numbers — 
a  force  provided  with  field  and  siege  artillery 
'vastly   superior   to   anything   which   from    the 


16th  to  the  morning  of  the  23rd  could  be 
opposed  to  them  on  the  Yser — and  they  had 
held  that  force  at  bay  not  for  48,  but  for  Ji^arly 
200  hours.  The  Belgians  had  shown  that  neither 
the  severe  trials  of  successive  battles  nor  the  still 
greater  stress  of  retreat  had  damped  their  ardour. 
They  were  still  able  and  willing  to  meet  the  foe 
and   put  a  stop  to  hi.'^  most  ardent  efforts. 


CHAPTER   LV. 


RUSSIA'S  PROBLEM. 


Russia's  Numbers  and  the  Wild  Stories  they  Produced — The  Difficulties  of  Russia — 
The  Wonderful  Frontier  Railways  of  Germany — The  Vulnerability  of  Poland — The 
Forest  of  Augustowo,  and  the  Desolate  Borders  of  the  Niemen — East  Prussia,  the 
Idolized  Province  of  the  Junkers — The  Effect  of  the  Battle  of  Tannenberg — Poland 
AND  Its  Cities — Why  the  Russian  Poles  Hated  the  Prussians — How  the  Prussians 
Oppressed  the  Poles  of  Posen — German  Risks  of  Invasion  in  Silesia — Austria's  Position 
IN  Galicia — The  Struggle  for  the  Carpathians — Germany's  Eastern  Line  of  Fortresses — 
Przemysl  and  Cracow — The  German  Plan  of  Campaign,  and  Why  It  Failed — The  Real 
Problems  to  be  Faced  by  Russia — Cracow  the  True  Russian  Objective — Rapidity  of  the 
Russian  Mobilization — Russian  Unity  at  the  Outbreak  of  War — The  Tsar's  Decree 
against  Liquor — The  First  Six  Months'  Fighting. 


WHEN  the  war  began,  the  Allies  in 
the   West   were   for   a   brief   space 
hypnotized     by     the     thought     of 
Russia's  numbers.  Little  considera- 
tion was  given  by  the  public  of  London  and 
Paris  to  her  difficulties.     The  vast  weight  of  the 
mighty  Russian  Empire  fired  the  imagination 
of  statesmen,  combatants,  and  populace  alike. 
Russia's    trials    and    misfortunes    in    previous 
campaigns  were  instantly  forgotten.     When  it 
was  realized  that  the  whole  resources  of  a  State 
nimibering    173,000,000   of   people   were   being 
thrown   into   the   scale   against   the   Germanic 
League,  it  seemed  to  many  as  though  the  war 
was  already  won.     The  Tsar,  it  was  said,  was 
mobilizing  millions  on  millions  of  men.     Count- 
less hordes  of  Cossacks,  so  the  wild  stories  ran, 
were  to  sweep  across  the  Prussian  plains  and 
thunder  against  the  gates  of  Berlin.     Few  paused 
to   thinlv,    few  indeed   seemed  to   know,   that, 
though   there   were   mj^riads   of   Russians,   the 
Cossack  forces   were   by  no   means   unlimited, 
and  in  any  case  were  not  Russia's  mainstay. 
The  vision  of   the  conquering  Cossack    was  so 
luiiversal  that  fables  about  trainloads  of  Cos- 
Vol.  HI.— Part  32.  201 


sacks  passing  through  England  on  their  way 
to  Northern  France  gained  widespread  currency, 
and  had  at  last  to  be  officially  contradicted  by 
the  British  Government.  The  conviction  that 
Russia  would  instantly  march  from  triumph  to 
triumph  was  less  easy  to  chasten.  The  Russian 
armies  were  likened  to  a  steam-roller,  and  the 
phrase  "  the  Russian  steam-roller  "  obtained  a 
great  vogue  in  England  and  France.  The 
popular  impression  was  that  the  steam-roller 
would  overcome  all  obstacles  and  ponderously 
pursue  its  course  to  the  Prussian  capital  with- 
out a  halt.  It  would  be  too  much  to  say  that 
these  ideas  ever  produced  any  relaxation  of 
effort  in  the  West,  but  for  some  time  they 
induced  a  rather  mischievous  belief  that  it  was 
to  Russia  that  the  Allies  must  chiefly  look  for  a 
final  victory.  Happily,  as  the  war  progressed 
and  its  relative  asjiects  were  seen  in  a  truer 
perspective,  all  the  Allies  came  to  realize  that 
the  war  would  only  be  won  by  the  united 
sacrifices  and  labours  of  every  nation  alike. 

The  difficulties  of  Rvissia  soon  proved  to  bo 
manifold.  She  had  the  men,  and  they  canu>  in 
masses  from  every  part  of  her  Empire.     There 


202 


THE     TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THBJ     WAR. 


THE    TSAR    AND    THE    GRAND    DUKE 
NICHOLAS. 

were,  however,,  embarrassing  shortages  of 
equipment  of  every  kind,  from  clothing  to 
great  guns. 

It  was  not  that  the  Russian  Army  had  not 
made    immense  progi'ess    during  the    previous 
decade.     Since    the    Russo-Japanese    War    it 
had  been  transformed  out  of  recognition.     Tlie 
trouble    was    that    the    material    required    for 
mobilization  upon  such  an  immense  scale  had 
not  been  accumulated  in  sufficient  quantities  ; 
and  no  better  proof  could  be  cited  that  Russia 
not  only  did  not  enter  upon  a  premeditated 
war,  but  drew  the  sword  with  the  utmost  pos- 
sible reluctance.     Next  to  difficulties  of  equip- 
ment    came     difficulties     of     transport.     The 
German    eastern     frontier    had     been    covered 
with    a    network    of    strategic    railways.     The 
Austrian   province   of   Galicia   was   fairly   well 
served  by  viseful  lines.     The  Russian  railway 
system    was    wofully    scanty    by    comparison, 
which  was  yet  another  proof  that  the  Russian 
Ooverrjment  had  not  sought  war.     A  railway 
map  of  Eastern  Europe  served  by  itself  as  con- 
vincing evidence  of  the  relative  intentions  of 
Germany  and  Russia.     The  eastern  provinces  of 
Prussia  wer^  gridironed  with  lines  whose  pur- 
poses were  military  rather  than  economic.     On 
the  Russian  side  the  map  was  comparatively 
blank,  the  very  roads  were  few  and  poor,  and 


from  end  to  end  of  the  Russian  westt^m  frontier 
there  was  no  railway  following  the  course  of  the 
Empire's  boundary,  as  was  the  case  on  German 
territory.  There  were  reasons  for  the  sparse- 
ness  of  Ru.ssia's  railways.  Her  territories  were 
so  spacious  that  they  included  one-sixth  of  the 
land  regions  of  the  globe,  welded  into  one 
cohesive  whole.  All  the  energies  of  Russian 
railway  builders  had  been  thrown  into  the  con 
striiction  of  great  trunk  lines  throughout  tliese 
wide  dominions.  Had  some  of  the  money 
spent  upon  the  Siberian  and  Transcaspian 
Railways  been  expended  upon  railway-building 
in  Poland,  and  especially  on  lateral  railways 
parallel  to  the  course  of  the  frontier,  Russia 
would  have  been  better  able  to  confront  the 
first  formidable  German  advance  tlu-ough 
Central  and  Southern  Poland  to  the  Vistula. 
She  did  not  build  strategic  railways  in  her 
western  provinces  because  her^oUcy  was  essen-' 
tially  pacific.  Her  ultimate  aim  was  internal 
development,  and  not  war.  In  the  end  it  was 
proved  again  and  again  that  her  abstention  had 
unconsciously  assisted  her  operations  in  the 
war.  The  German  mihtary  machine  was  de- 
signed for  dependence  upon  railwaj^.  When 
the  Germans  invaded  Belgium  and  France  they 
found  read}'  to  hand  an  elaborate  system  of 
railways  almost  as  complex  and  as  efficient  as 
their  own.  When  they  entered  Poland  and  had 
to  march  painfully  over  an  almost  roadless  land, 
their  efficiency  was  speedily  impaired.  ^^Tien- 
ever  the  Germans  were  cut  off  from  the  loco- 
motive, their  offensive  gradually  lost  momen- 
tum. The  Russian  soldiers  marched  to  war  on 
their  own  feet,  and  bore  the  hardsliips  of  slow 
progression  more  successfully. 

Another  difficulty  wliich  greatly  hampered 
Russia  was  her  isolation.  She  was  everywhere 
cut  off  from  the  open  sea  save  at  distant  Vladi- 
vostock,  on  the  Pacific,  where  a  passage  was  cut 
through  the  ice  during  the  winter  with  very 
great  difficulty.  The  Baltic  was  at  once  closed 
to  her.  After  Turkey  declared  war,  the  Black 
Sea  was  hermetically  sealed  for  the  whole 
%vinter.  Archangel  was,  ordinarily,  shut  in  by 
ice  from  October  to  May,  and  was  in  any  case 
inadequately  served  by  rail,  though  steps  were 
quickly  taken  to  improve  the  railway  Une,  and, 
by  means  of  icebreakers,  to  keep  the  port  open 
a  longer  time  than  usual.  Russia  needed 
vast  quantities  of  supplies  from  her  Allies,  and 
for  a  long  time  very  few  of  her  requirements 
could  be  met,  save  to  a  small  extent  through 
Vladivostock  and   Archangel.     Her  difficulties 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


203 


did  not  end  here.  Tier  crowning  difficulty  was 
t  lie  configuration  and  character  of  her  frontier, 
to  which  attention  must  now  be  paid. 

The  dominating  feature  of  the  western  fron- 
tier of  Russia  was  the  position  of  the  province 
of  Poland,  which  was  thrust  like  a  great  broad 
wedge  far  into  the  territory  of  the  Germanic 
Powers.  From  the  point  where  the  River 
Warta  crossed  from  Russian  to  Prussian  ground, 
the  distance  to  Berlin  was  only  180  miles. 
Small  wonder  that  the  uninstructed,  knowing 
nothing  -of  Germany's  means  of  defence, 
dreamed  of  Russian  troops  passing  down 
Unter  den  Linden  within  a  few  weeks  of  the 
outbreak  of  war.  The  truth  was  that  Russia 
was  extremely  vulnerable  in  Poland,  as  she 
realized  with  great  poignancy  very  soon.  On 
the  north  the  provinces  of  West  and  East 
Prussia  ciu-ved  far  over  Poland.  On  the  south 
the  Austrian  province  of  Galicia  not  only  en- 
wrapped the  M'hole  Southern  Polish  border, 
but  reached  the  Russian  provinces  of  Volhynia 
and  Podolia,  and  even  touched  Bessarabia. 
Poland  was,  in  short,  a  dangerous  salient  for 
Russia.  From  three  sides,  well  served  by  rail- 
ways, blows  could  be  struck  at  the  great  city  of 
Warsaw,  which  was  the  heart  of  Poland.  Before 
Russia  could  think  of  a  march  to  Berlin,  she 


had  to  clear  her  flanks,  and  to  make  sure  that 
she  would  not  be  assailed  from  either  East 
Prussia  or  Galicia.  As  was  to  be  expected, 
instead  of  marching  on  BerUn  she  fotind  the 
greater  part  of  the  province  of  Poland  overrun 
by  the  enemy.  Her  efforts  to  rid  herself  of  the 
invaders  not  only  constituted  a  great  part  of 
the  first  stages  of  the  war  ;  they  were,  in  fact, 
almost  as  effective  as  the  process  of  invading 
Prussia  which  the  ignorant  expected,  because 
in  the  long  and  fierce  combats  which  ensued 
Russia  was  able  slowly  but  persistently  to  wear 
down  the  strength  of  her  foes. 

As  a  matter  of  convenience,  it  will  be  well 
to  examine  the  frontiers  of  Russia,  Germany, 
and  Austria-Hungary  conjointly.  The  military 
and  political  problems  they  presented  were  so 
interdependent  that  a  correct  conception  of 
the  position  can  only  be  gained  by  passing  in 
imagination  at  will  across  boundaries  which 
were  largely  artificial.  The  Russian  Baltic 
provinces  of  Kovno  and  Courland  were  flat 
plains  with  scarcely  a  ridge,  and  for  the  most 
part  thinly  populated.  From  a  quarter  to  a 
third  of  their  whole  area  was  covered  with 
forests,  and  the  impression  conveyed  in  a 
joiu-ney  through  them  to  Petrograd  was 
of    an    almost    empty    thickly-wooded    land. 


AMMUNITION    TRANSPORTS    FORDING    A    RIVER. 


204 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


There  was  a  considerable  German  population, 
especially  in  the  towns,  and  a  good  deal  of  the 
territory  was  held  by  magnates  of  German 
descent.  German  influence  had  for  centuries 
been  very  marked  in  West  Russia,  and  the 
factor  thus  presented  was  not  without  its 
influence  upon  the  war.  The  nattiral,  though 
not  the  actual,  frontier  of  Russia  in  this  direction 
was  formed  by  the  River  Niemen.  The  Niemen 
ran  roughly  parallel  with  the  eastern  frontier 
of  East  Prussia,  for  a  distance  of  about  80 
miles,  between  the  cities  of  Grodno  and  Kovno. 
Along  that  stretch  its  average  distance  from 
the  Prussian  frontier  was  about  50  miles. 
It  then  turned  due  westward  and  eventually 
traversed  about  70  miles  of  Prussian 
territory  before  entering  the  Baltic.  At  the 
point  where  it  entered  Prussia  it  was  about 
500  yards  wide.  In  that  long  strip  of  territory 
80  miles  by  50,  between  the  Niemen  and 
East  Prussia,  there  was  much  desperate  fight- 
ing during  the  first  few  months  of  the  war. 
It  was  a  wild  and  desolate  country,  full  of 
forests  and  small  lakes  and  marshes.  Its 
southern  half  was  nearly  fiUed  by  the  great 
forest  of  Augustowo,  in  the  midst  of  which  stood 
the  town  of  Suwalki.  The  whole  strip  was 
classified  as  part  of  Poland.  Napoleon  knew 
it  well,  for  the  bulk  of  the  Grand  Army  traversed 
it,  and  crossed  the  Niemen  at  Kovno  and 
Grodno   in   June,    1812.     It  was   through   the 


forest  of  Augustowo  that  Hindenburg  ra.shly 
advanced  to  the  Niemen  in  September,  1914, 
after  his  victory  at  Tannenberg.  HLs  main 
advance  was  by  way  of  a  causeway  which  ran 
through  the  marshes  and  woods  from  Suwalki. 
The  opposing  armies  were  actually  firing  at 
one  another  across  the  Niemen  on  September 
25,  but  all  the  German  attempts  at  a  crossing 
failed,  and  in  the  end  the  enemy  were  pursued 
back  through  the  forest  to  their  own  territory. 
The  forest  of  Augustowo  again  came  into  promi- 
nence when  von  Hindenburg  once  more  cleared 
East  Prussia  of  Russian  troops  in  the  following 
February  and  March.  On  that  occasion  his 
operations  included  a  march  on  Kovno  along 
both  sides  of  the  Niemen  from  Prussian  terri- 
tory, but  he  failed  to  reach  Kovno  because  he 
was  opposed  on  the  line  of  two  small  tributary 
rivers,  the  Dubissa  and  the  Niewissa,  which 
feU  into  the  main  stream  from  a  northerly 
direction.  During  this  phase  of  the  campaign 
important  Russian  units  were  cut  off  in  the 
forest  of  Augustowo,  though  sections  fought 
their  way  out  from  its  recesses  for  days  after- 
wards. Htndenburg's  troops  again  reached 
the  Niemen  during  February,  and  even  crossed 
it,  but  failed  to  make  good  their  position.  It 
should  be  understood  that  the  whole  of  th© 
fighting  in  this  region  turned  upon  the  repeated 
German  attempts  to  make  good  the  passage 
of   the   Niemen.     The  statement   that   in   this 


RUSSIANS    DIGGING    TRENCHES. 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


•205 


area  the  Niemen  \\  as  the  natural  frontier  of  Rus- 
sia was  not  an  idle  one.  The  river  was  of  the 
utmost  value  to  Russia,  for  among  other 
things,  it  protected  in  part  the  vital  main 
line  of  railway  from  Petrograd  to  Warsaw. 

Across  the  border  lay  East  Prussia,  the 
idolized  province  of  the  Prussian  Jiuikers. 
Just  as  in  the  north  the  object  of  Germany  was 
to  make  the  passage  of  the  Niemen,  so  the 
very  first  object  of  the  Russians  was  to  drive 
the  German  garrisons  out  of  East  Prussia, 
where  they  were  believed  to  be  weak.  East 
Prussia  was  the  mos't  bleak  and  dreary  of  the 
(ierman  provinces.  It  \Aas  part  of  the  great 
]:)lain  which  sloped  down  to  the  sand  dunes  of 
the  Baltic.  On  its  open  lands  great  quantities 
of  rye  and  potatoes  were  gi-own,  but  its  special 
characteristic,  which  played  a  great  part  in 
the  war,  was  found  in  the  tangle  of  lalces  and 
w^oods  and  swamps  in  the  south-eastern  portion, 
all  along  the  Russian  frontier,  which  was 
collectively  known  as  Masuria.  This  area  was 
really  a  continuation  of  the  Russian  strip  within 
the  angle  of  the  Niemen,  but  it  constituted 
even  more  difficult  country  for  military  opera- 
tions, and  was  believed  to  form  a  more  useful 
defence  of  German  territory  than  many  artillery 
positions.  A  scheme  for  draining  and  culti- 
vating it  had  been  prudently  rejected  on  mili- 
tary grounds.  It  was  protected  by  a  system  of 
blockhouses,  and  there  were  garrisons  in  the 
various  small  towns  in  its  recesses,  while  the 
Germans  had  not  neglected  to  endow  it  with 
several  of  the  railway  lines  upon  which  they  so 
greatly  leaned.  When,  however,  the  Russians 
swept  into  East  Prussia  in  the  fii'st  month  of 
tlie  war,  they  carried  all  before  them.  They 
moved  along  the  main  railway  line  to  Berlin. 
They  menaced  the  fortress  of  Konigsberg. 
They  drove  in  the  frontier  posts  and  overran 
th '  Masurian  lake  region.  By  the  end  of 
August  they  seemed  masters  of  the  gi'eater  part 
of  East  Prussia,  and  were  even  thi'eatening 
^^"est  Prussia  and  the  line  of  the  Lower  Vis- 
tula. Then  came  the  sudden  appearance  of 
Hindenburg,  and  tlie  series  of  movements 
which  ended  in  the  crushing  defeat  of  the  main 
Russian  forces  at  Tannenberg.  The  result 
of  the  battle  was  that  Germany  recovered 
j)ossession  of  her  province,  though  the  ra\'ages 
of  war  had  hit  it  sorely,  and  Berlin  was  filled 
with  refugees  from  the  East  Prussian  towns. 

Whether  the  Germans  were  geographically 
justified  in  giving  the  name  of  Tannenberg 
to  this  memorable  cncoimter  was  an  open  ques- 


THE    KAISER    IN    EAST    PRUSSIA. 
General  von  Mackensen  in   the  centre. 

tion.  Historical  reasons  influenced  them.  East 
Prussia  was  the  real  cradle  and  stronghold 
of  the  Prussian  race.  From  its  chill  plains 
and  dense  forests  sprang  the  nobles  and  rulers 
who,  under  the  leadership  of  the  House  of 
Hohenzollern,  eventually  welded  the  German 
Empire  into  an  organic  whole.  When  in  the 
fourteenth  century  the  German  tribes  were 
pressed  back  from  the  Rhone  and  the  Meuse, 
the  tide  of  migration  swept  eastward  again. 
German  colonists  crossed  the  Elbe  and  the 
lower  Vistula,  and  settled  in  the  eastern  forests 
and  marshes,  which-  were  already  occupied 
in  part  by  their  own  near  kinsmen,  though  still 
more  by  Slavonic  tribes.  The  powerful  Teu- 
tonic Order  of  Knighthood,  which  controlled 
the  w'ork  of  colonization,  eventually  came  into 
coiiflict  with  Poland.  The  Knights  were  over- 
thrown by  the  Poles :  in  the  great  battle  of 
Tannenberg  on  July  15,  1410.  The  conflict 
remains  a  landmark  in  the  eternal  struggle 
between  Teuton  and  Slav.  It  finds  a  promi- 
nent though  moitrnful  place  in  German  history. 
When  Prmco  Biilow,  in  his  retirement,  wrote 
his  famotis  book  on  "  Imperial  Germany,"  ho 
could  still  refer  with  regret  to  "(he  black 
day  of  Tarmenberg."  The  rejoicings  over 
Hindenburg's  victory  were  far  more  than  the 

joyful    reception    of    the    news    of    a    triumph. 

.12     2 


206 


THE     TIMEfi    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAP. 


I"  Tiiiu'^  "  photographs. 

THE     GRAND     DUKE     NICHOLAS. 

1.     Conversing  with  a  Priest.  2.     With  his  StaflF  ofiRcers. 

3.     Arriving  at  Headquarters.  4.     Planning  an  attack. 

5.     Reviewing  Cossacks. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


207 


The  battle  of  Tannenberg  seemed  to  Germanj^ 
to  efface  a  bitter  niemorj-,  and  to  compensate 
for  the  grief  of  five  hundred  years.  East 
I'russia  had,  nevertheless,  not  been  so  easily 
defended  as  the  Germans  expected.  They  had 
thought  that  the  small  fortress  of  Boyen, 
standing  near  Lotzen  in  the  middle  of  the  lake 
region,  would  serve  to  check  the  passage  of  an 
army.  The  Russians  took  Boyen  with  the 
greatest  ease.  It  needed  great  forces  of  troops, 
and  some  serious  Russian  mistakes,  to  reco\er 
the  province  and  to  hold  it  safely  even  for  a 
limited  time.  But  as  the  effect  of  the  invasion 
of  East  Prussia  upon  the  spirits  of  the  Germans 
wa-s  very  marked  for  political  reasons,  so  the 
expulsion  of  the  invaders  had  a  correspondingly 
marked  result  in  the  retiurn  of  German  confi- 
dence. On  the  other  hand,  the  battle  of  Tan- 
nenberg gravely  affected  the  liiissian  plan 
of  campaign.  It  meant  a  certain  amount  of 
confusion  and  postponement.  It  did  not  in 
the  least  depress  the  indomitable  cheerfulness 
(jf  the  Russians,  but  it  coixipelled  their  Com- 
mander-in-Chief to  niodify  his  strategy. 

The  next  section  of  the  frontier  with  which  it 
is  necessary  to  deal  is  the  great  wedge  of  Poland, 
at  once  the  blessing  and  the  bane  of  Russian 
strategy.  Poland  was  advantageous  because  it 
stretched  so  far  in  the  direction  of  the  heart  of 
the  homeland  of  the  foe.  It  was  a  perplexing 
problem  because,  as  already  explained,  it  was 
surrounded  on  three  sides  by  enemy  territory. 
Through  its  centre  ran  the  great  river  Vistula, 
entering  the  province  from  Galicia,  flowing  north 
and  nortli-west  to  Warsaw,  and  then  passing 
westward  until  it  entered  Germany  near  Thorn. 
As  the  Niemen  dominated  strategy  farther 
north,  so  the  Vistula  was  the  chief  factor  of 
.strategy  in  the  centre  of  Poland.  The  Germans 
were  astride  its  lower  reaches,  and  thus  could 
enter  Poland  along  both  its  banks  ;  but  where 
the  river  curved  southward  at  Warsaw  it  pra- 
.sented  an  obstacle  athwart  the  line  of  German 
advance  which  was  to  stand  Russia  in  gootl 
stead.  The  Vistula  had  important  tributaries. 
On  the  north  the  River  Narew,  which  entered 
the  \'istula  below  Warsaw,  formed,  with  its 
feeder  the  Bobr,  an  important  line  extending 
almost  to  the  Niemen  at  Grodno.  West  of 
Warsaw  tlie  small  River  Bzura,  witli  its  lesser 
tributary  the  Rawa,  made  a  valuable  line  on 
which  the  Russians  held  the  Germans  in  check 
during  the  latter  part  of  the  winter.  The 
Pilitza  was  another  river  in  Southern  Poland 
whose  course  w  as  the  scene  of  ri.'i)eated  conflicts. 


as  was  also  the  River  Nida,  which  entered  the 
Vistula  on  the  Galician  frontier. 

Poland  north  of  the  Vistula  was  an  open 
wooded  plain,  containing  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  the  Narew  marshes  of  great  importance  in 
relation  to  military  movements.  Marshes  had 
a  considerable  effect  upon  the  Polish  campaign. 
There  were  extensive  marshes  to  the  west  of 
Warsaw  which  greatly  hampered  the  Germans 
in  their  attempts  to  strike  at  the  capital  of  the 
province.  There  were  others  before  Lowicz  and 
near  Lodz  which  served  to  contract  the  German 
iuo\-ements  when  they  were  endeavouring  to 
cross  the  Bzura  in  their  second  dash  towards 
^Varsaw■.  youthern  Poland  was  of  greater 
altitude,  with  more  forests,  and  occasional  deep 
gorges — a  very  difficult  country  for  military 
operations.  The  population  of  Poland  w^as 
denser  than  in  any  other  part  of  Russia,  showing 
an  av^erage  of  200  to  the  square  mile.  Warsaw- 
had  800,000  inhabitants,  and  many  flourishing 
manufactures.  Its  central  position,  its  com- 
mand of  road,  rail  and  river,  its  bridge  over  the 
Vistula,  and  its  great  political  importance, 
made  it  the  goal  of  German  ambitions  in  the 
eastern  theatre  of  war.  The  capture  of  Warsaw 
w  ould  have  implied  a  withdraw  al  of  the  Russian 
forces  along  the  whole  front  in  Poland,  to  a 
line  resting  on  the  River  Bug  and  the  huge 
Pripet  marshes  in  its  rear.  When  Htnden- 
burg  made  his  first  ad\'ance  through  Central 
Poland  to  the  Vistula,  iiis  troops  were  confident 
that  they  would  enter  the  city.  They  almost 
reached  the  outskirts.  The  roar  of  the  gims 
could  be  heard  by  the  alarmed  inhabitants,  and 
for  a  few  hom-s  it  was  thought  that  the  capital 
was  lost.  Reinforcements  arrived  by  rail  in  the 
nick  of  time,  marched  straight  into  the  firing 
line,  and  drove  the  Germans  back.  The  second 
city  of  Poland  was  Lodz,  which  had  400,000 
inhabitants.  Lodz  was  a  "  mushroom  "  town 
of  modern  gi-owth.  with  a  great  cotton  industry. 
It  was  a  straggling  place,  chiefly  consisting  of 
one  w  ide  main  thoroughfare  several  miles  long. 
There  was  heavy  fighting  before  Lodz  when  the 
Germans  made  their  second  advance  in  Central 
Poland  to  the  line  of  the  Bziu-a.  The  (Jernian 
bulletins  alleged  that  fierce  conflicts  occurred 
in  the  streets  of  the  city,  but  the  truth  was  that 
the  Russians  designedly  evacuated  it,  and  thi 
enemy  entered  unopposed.  For  a  long  tune 
they  treated  Lodz  with  ptH'uliar  tenderness,  the 
reason  being  that  it  was  more  German  than 
Polish.  tJerman  immigrants  had  gone  to  Loilz 
in   great   mmibers,   attracted  by   its   industrial 


208 


THE    TIMES    HISTOnr    OF    THE    WAB. 


[A/Ur  a  painting  by  a  German  ariiU. 

GERMAN    REFUGEES    FROM    EAST    PRUSSIA    IN    BERLIN. 


possibilities.  They  welcomed  the  invaders,  and 
the  help  given  to  the  foe  by  German  aliens 
tliroughout  Poland  was  not  the  least  of  the 
Russian  difficulties.  Some  of  the  smaller 
Polish  towns  had  flourishing  industries.  Lublin 
and  Plock  possessed  sugar  refineries.  Kalisz 
had  a  valuable  trade  in  lace  and  embroideries. 
Radora,  the  centre  of  a  ti'act  of  potato  culti\a- 
tion,  had  huge  distilleries.  Piotrkow  lay  in  a 
great  mining  district.  Bendzin,  near  the 
Silesian  frontier,  was  in  the  centre  of  a  prosper- 
ous coalfield.  Both  in  the  eastern  and  the 
western  theatres  the  invading  Germans  seized 
and  wrecked  great  manufacturing  antl  mining 
districts.  Just  as  they  paralyzed  the  industries 
of  Belgium  and  Northern  France,  so  they 
devastated  Western  Poland.  The  scenes  of 
desolation  in  Flanders  and  the  Departments  of 
the  Nord  and  the  Pas  de  Calais  were  surpassed 
by  the  misery  wrought  in  Poland,  where  the 
countryside  was  left  as  bare  as  though  it  had 
been  devoured  by  locusts. 

Much  was  said,  and  rightlj^  said,  about  the 
courage  and  devotion  with  wliich  the  people  of 


Belgium  flung  themselves  in  the  pathway  of  the 
invading  German  armies.  They  sufTeretl  the 
ravaging  of  their  countiy  rather  than  make  even 
a  forced  and  involuntary  league  with  the 
invaders.  It  was  not  so  generally  recognized 
that  the  equally  gallant  Poles  found  themselves 
called  upon  to  make  a  similar  decision.  Ger- 
many counted  upon  a  rising  of  the  Poles  in  her 
own  favour  as  soon  as  she  crossed  the  I'olish 
frontier.  The  Austrians  had  precisely  siniilar 
expectations.  Both  Powers  were  so  lacking 
in  political  perception  that  they  believed  they 
would  be  welcomed  by  the  Polish  people  as 
deliverers  from  the  Russian  yoke.  Their 
anticipation  of  an  immediate  Polish  rebellion 
\\as  one  of  the  factors  in  their  planning  of 
the  war.  It  must  be  admitted  that  they  were 
not  so  comijletely  without  justification  as 
was  manifest  m  their  error  about  Belgium. 
Even  experienced  Russians  had  manj'  misgivings 
regarding  the  Poles,  and  feai'ed  either  open  <>r 
veiled  hostilitj^  What  both  sides  overlooked 
was  that,  though  the  Poles  believed  themselves 
to  have  great  and  manifold  grie\ances  against 


THE     TIMES    HmVRY    OF     THE     WAR. 


209 


Rus.^ia^  these  were  of  comparatively  modern 
growth,  and  tlie  bitterness  they  engendered  was 
steadily  diminishing.  Their  hatred  of  the 
Prussians,  on  the  other  hand,  \\as  ingrained  in 
every  fibre  of  their  being.  It  had  been  nurtured 
during  a  thousand  years.  It  was  a,s  old  as 
Polish  hi.story.  If  the  Prussians  never  forgot 
Tannenberg,  neither  did  the  descendants  of 
their  Polish  victors.  When  Russia  marched  to 
war,  the  hearts  of  all  the  Polish  people  flamed 
forth  in  lier  support.  The  nearest  counterpart 
to  the  outburst  of  Polish  loyalty  to  the  Tsar  was 
the  equally  ardent  upheaval  of  enthusiasm  in 
India  for  the  cause  of  the  King-Emperor,  a 
demonstration  which  upset  yet  another  of  the 
calculations  of  Berlin.  The  Poles  and  the  Rus- 
sians found  themselves  at  one,  and  they  arnied 
in  a  common  cause.  The  promise  of  Polish 
autonomy  was  the  sequel  to  the  declaration  of 
the  Pol&s,  and  not,  as  was  at  first  supposed,  its 
inspiration.  The  promise  was  a  reward,  and 
not  a  bribe.  Meanwhile,  the  unfortunate  Poles 
had  to  endure  the  wholesale  wrecking  of  their 
towns  and  villages  by  the  Germans  as  the  result 
of  their  fidelity. 

The  Germans  had  their  Polish  question  too. 
Its  heart  lay  in  the  province  of  Posen,  on  the 
westernmost  frontier  of  Poland.  There  were 
400,000  Protestant  Poles  in  East  Pru-ssia,  but 
there  were  over  a  million  Poles,  chiefly  Catholics, 
in  Posen.  For  a  centiuy  attempts  had  been 
made,  always  without  avail,  to  Prussianize  tlie 
Poles  of  Posen.  They  were  alternatch'  cajoled 
and  oppres.sed.  On  the  one  hand,  measures 
were  passed  so  recently  as  1907  for  exj)ro- 
priating  their  land  in  favour  of  German  colon- 
ists, while  they  were  also  forbidden  to  use  their 
own  language  at  public  meetings,  and  their 
children  v\ere  flogged  at  school  for  refusing  to 
answer  qviestions  in  Gennan.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  En^peror  William  sought  to  conciliate 
them  by  building  a  flamboyant  royal  castle  in 
the  city  of  Po.sen  at  a  cost  of  a  quarter  of  a 
million  sterling,  and  by  other  beguiling  ex- 
pedients. On  the  whole,  the  Poles  remained 
obdurate  enough,  and  their  resistance  to  Prus- 
sian methods  was  maintained  with  varying 
success  right  down  to  the  outbreak  of  war. 
They  were  dragooned  severely,  but  they  re- 
fused obedience.  Prince  Biilow  plainti\  ely  de- 
clared that  the  Poles  must  be  brought  "  to 
understand  the  German  spirit,"  and  he  insisted 
that  "  German  nationality  "  must  prevail  in 
the  eastern  provinces.  If  not,  he  said,  they 
would  have   "  a  Polish  danger,"  and  he  main- 


tained that  the  whole  future  of  the  German 
Em[)ire  was  bound  up  with  the  fate  of  the 
Eastern  Marches. 

There  was  no  great  physical  obstacle  to  a 
Russian  invasion  of  Posen,  when  circumstances 
permitted.  South  of  Thorn  and  the  ^Vistula, 
the  frontier  was  barred  for  some  distance  by  the 
inevitable  marshes.  Then  came  the  River 
Warta,  south  of  which  again  the  marsh  lands 
recurred  ;  but  the  valley  of  the  Warta  (the 
river  was  100  yards  broad  at  the  frontier)  was 
practicable  enough,  and  offered  a  natural  means 
of  ingress  into  Prussia.  It  may  be  added  that 
Posen  was  a  highly  cultivated  province,  and 
from  it  Germany  drew  large  supplies  of  rye. 

Russia,  however,  was  perhaj^s  even  more 
interested,  both  for  strategical  and  economic 
reasons,  in  the  province  of  Silesia,  which  lay  to 
the  south  of  Posen,  and  was  contiguous  to  the 
south-west  corner  of  Poland.  Silesia  was  half 
as  large  as  Ireland,  and  was  the  biggest  pro- 
vince in  Prussia.  It  contained  a  million  Poles, 
mostly  settled  near  the  frontier.  It  was  also, 
and  the  fact  was  of  infinite  importance,  the 
greatest  mantifacturing  and  mining  area  of 
Eastern  Germany.  ]Mr.  Hilaire  Belloc  acutely 
pointed  out  at  an  early  stage  of  the  war  that 
the  two  main  industrial  districts  of  Germany 
were  precisely  those  which  the  first  shock  of  an 
invasion  would  strike.  They  were  Westphalia 
in  the  west,  and  Silesia  in  the  east.  Of  the  two, 
Westphalia  was  the  more  important,  because 
armaments  were  almost  wholly  manufactured 
in  the  western  field.  The  ruin  of  Westphalia 
woiild  mean  a  hundred  times  more  than  the 
occupation  of  Berlin.  But  the  shutting  down  of 
the  mills  and  manufactories  and  mines  of  Silesia 
w  ould  have  an  almost  equally  paralyzing  effect 
upon  Germany's  capacity  and  desire  for  resist- 
ance. Silesia  had  tlie  richest  zinc  deposits  in 
the  world,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Beuthen, 
quite  close  to  the  frontier.  The  greatest 
mining  and  smelting  centres,  at  Zabrze,  Konigs- 
hutte,  and  elsewhere,  and  the  glass  industries 
of  Gleiwitz,  were  within  a  day's  march  of  Rus- 
sian territory.  The  largest  ironworks  in  Silesia, 
at  Konig.shutte,  could  have  been  shelled  from 
Russian  soil,  four  miles  away.  There  were 
flourishing  textile  industries  of  great  magnitude 
in  all  tlu!  \-alleys  of  Southern  and  (\'ntrr.l 
Silesia,  worked  chiefly  by  water  power.  The 
whole  countryside  was  full  of  mills,  and  packed 
with  a  dense  population.  It  was  practically 
undefended,  relied  neither  on  fortresses  nor  on 
natural  obstacles  against  invasion,  and  lay  at 


210 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAIL 


A    GERMAN    ENCAMPMENT    NEAR    THE    RUSSIAN    FRONTIER. 


the  mercy  of  a  succesfc'ful  foe.  The  basin  of 
the  River  Oder,  which  traversed  the  province 
in  a  north-westerly  direction,  led  directly  to 
Berlin,  though  it  was  guarded  by  certain  forti- 
fied positions,  of  which  more  anon.  Once  firmly 
estabhshed  in  Silesia,  the  Russians  could- strilce 
either  north-westward  at  Berlin,  or  south- 
westward,  through  the  Moravian  Gate  between 
the  Carpathians  and  the  Sudetic  Mountains,  at 
Vienna.  Breslau,  the  capital,  was  the  third  city 
of  Prussia,  with  half  a  million  inhabitants  and 
a  huge  trade.  The  province  also  contained 
many  rich  and  powerful  landowners  with  very 
great  estates. 

It  will  have  been  gathered  that  the  eastern 
frontier  of  Germany  was  not  so  vulnerable  as  it 
looked  upon  the  map.  Its  curious  shape  even 
conferred  some  advantages,  and  in  sections  it 
had  useful  natural  protection  in  the  shape  of 
marshes,  dense  woodlands,  and  rivers.  The 
case  of  Austria-Hungary,  which  must  next  be 
dealt  with,  was  far  otherwise.  The  natural 
frontier  of  the  Dual  Monarchy  on  the  north-east 
was  the  Carpathian  Range,  which  bordered  the 
territory  of  Hungary.  Tliis  barrier  furnished 
by  Nature  \\as  most  unwisely  passed  at  the  time 
of  the  partition  of  Poland,  towards  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  when  the  wide  province  of 
Galicia,  on  the  northern  side  of  the  Carpathians, 
was  acquired  by  Austria.  By  this  change  the 
Monarchy  gave  hostages  to  fortune.  A  portion 
of  the  northern  frontier  of  Galicia  was  formed  by 


the  Upper  \'istula,  but  much  of  the  rest  had  no 
natural  line  of  demarcation  at  all.  The  pro 
vince  was  traversed  by  several  rivers  rising  in 
the  Carpathians,  and  running  from  south  to 
north  mitil  they  fell  into  the  Vistula.  The  chief 
of  these  were  the  San,  the  Wistoka,  and  the 
Dunajec.  When  the  Russians  poured  into  tl,e 
province  from  the  east,  these  rivers  formed  a 
series  of  lines  on  which  the  defeated  Austrian 
armies  successively  rallied,  exactly  as  Sir 
Frederick  Maurice  had  foretold  many  year.s 
before.  As  a  whole  the  province  necessarily 
had  a  downward  slope  from  the  Carpathians  to 
the  rivers  Vistula  and  Dniester.  The  winter 
climate  was  very  bitter,  with  heavy  snowfalls, 
followed  usually  by  excessive  rain  in  tlie  spring. 
It  produced  extensive  crops,  and  was  the  most 
important  potato-growing  area  in  Austria,  but 
its  manufactures  were  backward.  The  (Jalician 
oil-field  was  very  extensive,  and  of  much  im- 
portance to  the  Germanic  Powers.  The  principal 
centres  of  oil  production  were  near  Drohobycz, 
Krosno,  and  Kolomea.  All  these  tracts  fell 
quite  early  into  the  possession  of  the  Russians, 
and  though  in  February,  1915,  they  were  com- 
pelled to  fall  back  from  Kolomea  for  a  time, 
very  little  Galician  oil  got  into  Austria  or  Ger- 
many after  the  first  two  months  of  the  war.  As 
Galicia  was  producing  two  million  tons  of  oil 
annually  in  time  of  peace,  the  loss  to  the  Ger- 
manic League  was  considerable. 

The  means  of  communication  in  Galicia  v\"ere 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


211 


very  good  when  compared  with  those  of  Poland. 
The  principal  railway  route  traversed  the  centre 
of  the  province  from  end  to  end,  from  Cracow 
tlirough  Tarnow,  Jaroslau,  Przemysl,  Lemberg, 
and  Kolomea  to  the  Rumanian  frontier,  with 
a  branch  from  Lemberg  bifurcating  into  Central 
and  Southern  Russia.  There  was  another  rail- 
way route  roughly  parallel  to  the  principal  one, 
but  running  along  the  lower  slopes  of  the  Car- 
pathians through  Sandec,  Sanok,  Stryj,  and 
Stanislau,  all  of  which  places  were  important 
junctions.  Besides  these  long  lines,  there  were 
a  number  of  transverse  sections,  and  no  portion 
of  the  province  was  very  far  from  railway  com- 
munication. There  were  11  points  at  which 
rail-heads  approached  the  Russian  frontier,  with 
no  communication  beyond  it,  and  the  fact 
throws  an  instructive  light  upon  the  industry 
the  Austrians  had  expended  upon  the  Galician 
railway  system. 

The  two  principal  towns  in  Galicia  were 
Lemberg,  the  capital,  in  the  eastern  area,  with 
about  160,000  inhabitants  ;  and  Cracow,  in  the 
western  area,  with  about  90,000  inhabitants. 
The  Russians  took  Lemberg  at  the  beginning 
of  September,  and  at  once  pushed  on  to  the 
investment  of  the  fortress  of  Przemysl,  which 
lay  one-third  of  the  way  towards  Cracow. 
Lemberg  was  the  fourth  city  of  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  Empire,  and  80  per  cent,  of  its 
poptilation  were  Poles.  Cracow  was  the  corona- 
tion and  burial  place  of  the  Kings  of  Poland,  and 
was  still  "  the  intellectual  centre  of  the  Polish 
nation."  Poles  formed  more  than  two-thirds  of 
its  population.  Taking  the  people  of  Galicia 
as  a  whole,  however,  it  may  be  said  that  the 


Poles  numbered  about  45  per  cent.,  and  the 
Ruthenes  about  42  per  cent.  Although  the 
Poles  predominated  in  both  the  chief  cities  they 
were  mostly  concentrated  in  the  western  half  of 
the  province,  while  the  Ruthenes  dwelt  Ln  the 
eastern  half.  The  Ruthenes  were  racially  aldn 
to  the  Little  Russians  across  the  border.  The 
relations  betwreu  Poles  and  Ruthenes  are 
explained  in  Chapter  XXXVI.,  Volume  II. 
It  is  enough  to  say  here  that  the  Poles  had  been 
encoiu-aged  by  Austria  at  the  expense  of  the 
Ruthenes,  until  a  period  shortly  preceding  the 
war.  The  Ruthenes  welcomed  the  invading 
Russians,  whose  religion  was  the  same  as  their 
own.  The  attitude  of  the  Austrian  Poles,  who 
were  Roman  Catholics,  was  not  so  readily  dis- 
closed. They  had  fewer  grievances  than  their 
bretliren  in  Germany  and  Russia,  and  were  not 
so  restive  under  the  yoke. 

In  a  corner  between  Galicia  and  Rumania 
lay  the  Austrian  crowTi  duchy  of  the  Bukowina, 
"  the  land  of  beeches,"  a  region  of  the  thickly- 
wooded  foot-hills  of  the  Carpathians.  The 
Bukowina  was  unquestionably  more  Russian 
than  Austrian  in  sympathy  and  spirit.  Over 
40  per  cent,  of  the  population  was  Ruthene, 
about  35  per  cent,  was  Rumanian,  and  the 
Jews  numbered  13  per  cent.  The  German 
element  was  very  small  indeed.  Nearly  70  per 
cent,  of  the  people  belonged  to  the  Greek 
Orthodox  Church.  Czernowitz,  the  capital  of 
the  duchy,  was  a  bright  and  flourishing  little 
city  situated  on  a  height  above  the  Ri\er 
Pruth,  and  extensively  girt  by  marshes.  Its  size 
had  much  developed  iinder  Austrian  adminis- 
tration, and  its  industries  imfiudcd  the  manu- 


RUSSIAN    SERVICE    O.N    THE    BATTLEFIELD. 


212 


THE     IIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


factura  of  paper.  During  the  fir.^t  eight  months 
of  the  war  Czernowitz  twice  passed  alternately 
into  the  hands  of  Russians  and  Austrians,  and 
when  they  first  recaptured  it  the  Austrians  took 
})itter  vengeance  on  those  of  the  inhabitants 
who  had  shown  cordiality  to  the  invaders. 

The  whole  of  the  struggle  in  Galicia  and  the 
Bukowina  resolved  itself,  from  the  Russian 
point  of  view,  into  two  main  objects.  The 
first  was  to  reach  Cracow,  at  the  western  ex- 
tremity of  Galicia,  for  the  possession  of  Cracow 
was  an  imperative  prelude  to  the  invasion 
of  Silesia  and  Posen,  or  to  a  march  southward 
through  the  Moravian  Gate  upon  Vienna. 
The  second  was  to  secure  the  passes  of  the 
Carpathians,  which  gave  access  into  Hungary. 
The  Russians  were  very,  anxious  from  the  outset 
to  bring  pressvire  to  bear  upon  Hiuigary. 
Possibly  they  were  influenced  in  part  by  a 
belief  that  the  near  approach  of  hostile  arinies 
to  Buda-Pesth  would  induce  the  Magyars 
to  break  away  from  Austria  and  conclude  a 
separate  peace  on  their  own  account.  This 
belief  was  widely  shared  in  England  in  quar- 
ters where  the  conceptions  of  the  Magyar 
attitude  were  based  upon  romantic  and  quite 
misleading  impressions  deri\'ed  from  the  records 
of  the  days  of  Kossuth.  After  the  war  had 
been  in  progress  for  some  time  it  was  more 
generally  realized  that  the  Magyars  were 
largely  responsible  for  the  trend  of  Austro- 
Hungarian  policy,   and   that   their   inclination 


probably  was  to  stand  or  fall  by  the  fate  of 
Vienna.  The  steady  growth^  of  the  influence 
of  Count  Tisza,  the  Hungarian  Prime  Minister, 
who  was  soon  seen  to  be  the  most  powerful 
man  in  the  Monarchy,  confirmed  this  conclusion. 
Moreover,  the  Magj'ar  oppression  of  the  Slav 
races  of  the  Monarchy  had  been  one  of  the  fac- 
tors which  precipitated  the  war.  The  Magyars 
fought  in  politics  for  their  own  hand,  but  their 
bitter  anti-Slav  policy  compelled  them  to  range 
themselves  Ijeside  the  Austro-Germans.  Yet 
it  was  not  really  necessary  for  Russia  to  seek 
a  political  inotive  of  any  sort  for  striking  at 
Himgary.  Military  considerations  sufficed  to 
justify  her  plans.  Hungary  was  the  principal 
granary  of  the  Monarchy.  It  was  also  the  only 
large  source  of  supply  of  horses  left  .to  the 
Germanic  Powers.  In  times  of  peace  Germany 
annually  imported  large  numbers  of  horses 
from  Russia.  The  Hungarian  horses  were  of 
lighter  build,  but  they  were  better  than  nothing. 
Once  the  Carpathians  were  crossed,  the  wide 
plains  of  Hungary  offered  an  easy  path  for  a 
vigorous  foe.  By  invading  Hungary,  too,  the 
pressure  on  the  gallant  little  army  of  Serbia 
could  be  relieved.  Finally,  once  the  Russians 
held  the  crest  of  the  Carpathians  they  would 
fully  protect  their  left  flank  against  menace 
diu-ing  a  forward  movement  through  Poland 
against  Prussia.  It  was  not  surprising,  there- 
fore, that  throughout  the  long  winter,  the 
struggle   for  the  Carpathian  pa.sses  continued 


PANORAMA    OF    LEMBHRG. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAE. 


218 


with     unabated     violence,     no     matter     what 
conflicts  were  raging  elsewhere. 

The  Carpathians  were  part  of  the  bac^kbone 
of  Europe,  and  yet  they  were  very  httle  known 
to  travellers  and  tourists.  They  bore  small 
resemblance  to  the  Alps,  and  their  scenery, 
though  impressive,  was  not  on  the  grand  scale 
of  Switzerland.  No  Carpathian  height  was 
covered  with  perpetual  snow,  and  the  whole 
range  did  not  contain  a  single  glacier.  The 
highest  peak,  Mount  Franz  Josef,  was  in  the 
■J^atra  group  at  the  western  end,  and  was  8,737 
feet  high.  The  passes  were  easy  and  low. 
The  slopes  of  the  naountains  were  thickly 
wooded,  especially  on  the  south.  The  winter 
in  the  Carpathians  was  always  bitter,  and  if 
the  passes  were  practicable  enough  from  tlie 
jjoint  of  view  of  the  mountaineer,  they  were 
choked  with  snow.  Fighting  occurred  at  inter- 
vals along  a  section  of  the  Carpatliians  nearly 
300  miles  in  length,  extending  from  a  point 
-outh  of  the  town  of  Tarnow  in  Galicia  to  the 
borders  of  Rumania.  There  were  six  principal 
passes  the  possession  of  which  was  at  intervals 
contested,  the  Dukla,  the  Lupkow,  the  Uzsok, 
the  Volocz  or  Vereczke,  the  Delatyn  or  Koroz- 
mezo,  and  the  Borgo.  To  these  may  be  added 
the  n\inor  Ivirlibaba  Pass,  at  the  south-western 
corner  of  the  Bukowina.  The  Russians  crossed 
every  pass  except  the  Borgo  during  the  autumn 
and  winter,  some  more  than  once,  and  though 
they  were  compelled  to  withdraw  in  every  case, 
they  rarely  lost  possession  for  any  length  of 
time  of  the  northern  approaches.  Railways 
traversed  the  Lupkow,  Uzsok,  Volocz,  and 
Delatyn  Passes,  and  there  was  another  raihvay 
crossing  the  range  some  distance  to  the  west  of 
the  Dukla.  By  the  Lupkow  they  reached 
Homonna  and  the  verge  of  the  Hungarian 
plain.  By  the  Uzsok  they  came  to  Ung\ar  and 
beyond.  By  the  Volocz  they  raided  down 
the  valley  of  the  Latorcza  River  to  Munkacs 
and  still  farther.  By  the  Delatyn,  more  popu- 
larly known  as  "  the  Magyar  Way,"  because  it 
was  the  historic  route  for  invading  Hungary, 
they  marched  in  considerable  force  to  the  impor- 
tant town  of  Maramaros-Sziget,  where  they 
treated  the  alarmed  inhabitants  with  a  restraint 
which  won  their  confidence.  It  was  not  until 
strong  German  forces  were  brigaded  with  the 
Austrian  troops  early  in  1915 — it  was  believed 
on  the  direct  representations  of  Count  Tisza 
to  the  Kaiser — that  the  Russian  pressure  across 
the  Carpathians  was  seriously  checked.  One 
reason  for  the  movement  of  the  Russians  along 


NEWSPAPER     CORRESPONDENTS    WITH 
THE    RUSSIAN    ARMY. 

Back,   Mr.  Stanley  Washburn,    The    Times  corres- 
pondent;  centre,  Mr.  Pares;    left.  Col.  Asencheff; 
right,  Mr.  Soldatenkow. 

the  Magyar  Way  and  the  Volocz  Pass  was  that 
on  the  southern  slopes  of  the  range  in  these 
neighboiu-hoods  there  dwelt  large  numbers  of 
Ruthenes,  who  received  them  with  conspicuous 
pleasure. 

The  whole  of  the  terrain  of  the  eastern 
theatre  during  the  first  months  of  the  war 
has  now  been  examined  in  detail.  It  is  next 
necessary  to  explain  concisely  the  fortified 
positions  prepared  in  this  area  by  each  of  the 
three  Powers  involved.  The  principal  fortress 
in  East  Prussia  was  Konigsberg,  the  second 
capital  of  Prussia,  situated  on  the  River  Pregel. 
It  possessed  an  inner  and  outer  line  of  works 
beyond  which  were  12  detached  forts, 
six  on  each  side  of  the  Pregel.  In  addition, 
there  were  two  other  large  and  powerful  forts, 
that  of  Friedrichsburg,  on  an  island  in  the  river, 
to  the  west  of  the  city,  and  the  Kaserne  KJron- 
prinz,  within  the  ramparts  on  the  eastern  side. 
Konigsberg  ranked  as  a  first-class  fortress,  and 
was  the  headquarters  of  the  1st  Army  Corjte. 
It  lay  far  within  the  great  Frische  Lagoon,  on  a 
wooded  peninsula,  with  a  steep  and  forbidding 
coast.  On  the  long  spit  of  land  forming  the 
seaward  side  of  the  lagoon  was  the  entrenched 
camp    of    Pillau,    29    miles    from    Konigsberg. 

32—3 


214 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


RUSSIAN    TRENCHES    (SHOWING    TRAVERSES). 


The     whole     Koriigsberg   area   required   to   be 

treated  with  great  respect,  and  when  the  Rvis- 

sians    first    entered    East    Prussia    they    only 

sought  to  mask  the  fortress.     There  were  no 

other    important    protective    works    in    East 

Prussia,   although   the   difficult   lake  region   of 
Masuria,   with   its   blockliouses   and  the   small 

fort    of    Boyen,    formed    a    natural    means   of 

defence. 

On   the   line   of   the   Lower   Vistula,    in   the 

province  of  West   Prussia,  there  were  further 

powerful  fortresses.     Danzig,  at  the  mouth  of 

the  river, was  a  first-class  fortress  and  entrenched 

camp,  and  its  approaches  could  be  inundated 

on    the    eastern    side.     There    were    powerful 

works  opposite  Dirschau,  20  miles  to  the  south, 

forming  a  bridge-head  guarding  the  main  line 

-  to  Konigsberg  and  Petrograd.     About  45  miles 

farther  south  was  the  strong  fortress  of  Grau- 

denz,  on  the  right  banlc  of  the  Vistula,  forming 

another    valuable    bridge-head.     At    a    point 

92  miles  south  of  Danzig,  and  12  miles  from  the 

Russian  frontier  at  Alexandrowo,  stood  Thorn, 

a  fortress  which  was  one  of  the  chief  features 

of    the    defences    of    Eastern    Germany.     The 

town  was  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Vistula,  but 

both  banks  were  fortified.     There  was  the  usual 

circle  of  detached  forts,  eight  on  the  right  bank 

and  five  on  the  left.     At  Thorn  the  railway 

from  Warsaw  entered  Prussian  territory,  and 

the    place,     which    was    really    a    formidable 

bridge-head,     formed    the    pivot    of     Hinden- 

burg's    railway   strategy.     Thorn    and    Danzig 


have  been  compared  to  Metz  and  Strasburg, 
and  have  been  described  as  "  bastions,  as  it 
were,  commanding  the  curtain  between  them." 
The  whole  Lower  Vistula  was,  in  short,  very 
strongly  held.  A  subsidiary  but  very  impor- 
tant strategic  point  was  Bromberg,  32  miles 
west -north -west  of  Thorn,  and  the  centre  of  a 
network  of  railways.  It  guarded  the  railway 
bridges  across  the  River  Netze. 

Below  Thorn  there  was  much  marsh  country 
on  both  sides  of  the  frontier,  but  at  the  point 
where  the  valley  of  the  Warta  entered  Prussian 
territory  the  need  for  artificial  protection 
again  began.  Accordingly  the  great  railway 
centre  of  Posen,  which  stood  on  an  open  sandy 
plain,  was  provided  with  an  immense  entrenched 
camp,  which  had  to  be  reckoned  with  by  any 
army  marching  due  west  from  Warsaw  on 
Berlin.  South  of  Posen  there  were  yet 
more  marsh  lands.  An  inner  line  of  defence 
possessed  by  Eastern  Germany  was  the  line 
of  the  River  Oder,  which  could,  however,  be 
very  easily  crossed  b\'  an  invading  iarmy  in 
its  upper  reaches  in  Silesia.  Strong  garrisons 
were  maintained  at  Oppeln  and  Breslau,  but 
these  places  had  few  modern  fortifications. 
There  was  a  big  entrenched  camp  at  Xeisse, 
on  the  northern  side  of  the  Sudetic  mountains. 
The  principal  obstacle  to  an  advance  down  the 
Oder  was  the  fortress  of  Glogau,  to  the  north- 
west of  Breslau.  Glogau  had  been  a  fortress 
for  centuries,  and  was  built  partly  on  an  island 
and  partly  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Oder.     Its 


I 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


215 


foi'tifications  were  extensive,  for  it  was  an 
important  railway  junction.  The  remaining 
fortified  positions  on  the  line  of  the  Oder 
were  Kiistrin,  52  miles  east  of  Berlin,  the 
List  sl)ield  of  the  capital  ;  and  Stettin,  near 
the  mouth  of  the  river.  It  may  be  said  that 
the  true  defences  of  the  eastern  frontier  of 
Oerniany  were  provided  by  its  incomparable 
system  of  strategic  railways,  which  again  and 
again  enabled  von  Hindenburg  to  concentrate 
large  forces  quickly  and  secretly  at  varioiis 
points  from  which  liis  blows  were  launched 
like  thimderbolts.  Even  Silesia,  despite  the 
scarcity  of  fortified  positions,  was  astonishingly 
well  served  by  railways.  Seven  lines  of  railway 
ran  out  of  Breslau,  and  between  that  city  and 
rVacow  there  was  no  point  to  which  troops 
could  not  have  been  quickly  hurried. 

The  defences  of  Austria  in  Galicia  were  to  a 
great  extent  of  comparatively  modern  date. 
Until  the  last  half-century  Austria  had  not 
attempted  to  provide  substantial  defensi\  e 
positions  in  Galicia  at  all,  and  much  of  her 
works  had  been  built  since  the  twentieth 
century  began.  There  was  one  fortified  point 
in  the  Bukowina,  at  Zaleszczyski,  on  the 
Dniester,  at  the  frontier,  but  it  offered  no 
more    effective     opposition     to     the    Russians 


than  Maubeuge  did  to  the  Germans.  Lemberg 
was  stated  to  possess  certain  defences,  but 
when  the  Austrians  were  routed  before  the 
city  in  September  the  capital  instantly  fell. 
The  principal  Austrian  fortress  in  Galicia 
was  Przemysl,  sitviated  in  hilly  country  60 
iniles  east  of  Lemberg.  The  investment  of 
Przemysl  was  begun  directly  after  the  fall  of 
Lemberg,  and  though  interrupted  a';  times,  and 
not  made  complete  for  a  good  many  weeks, 
the  fortress  was  never  afterwards  left  alone 
for  long.  The  real  reason  why  Przemysl  was 
able  to  offer  such  a  prolonged  resistance  was 
that  the  Russians  were  at  first  short  of  heavy 
siege  artillery,  and  still  more  of  shells.  The 
ultimate  objective  of  the  Russian  struggles 
in  Galicia  was  always  Cracow.  The  city  of 
Cracow  was  surrounded  by  a  ring  of  six  powerful 
forts  on  both  sides  of  the  Vistula,  but  the  total 
length  of  the  perimeter  was  comparatively 
small,  and  it  was  not  believed  that  Cracow  could 
withstand  a  prolonged  siege.  The  Russians 
were  drawing  near  to  the  city  from  the  north 
early  in  December,  and  their  cavalry  were 
actually  within  five  miles  of  it  on  the  south, 
when  von  Hindenburgs  second  fierce  rush  on 
Warsaw  compelled  a  hiu-ried  shortening  of 
the     Russian     line.     When     von    Hkidenbnr? 


DANZIG. 
\  view  of  the  Langenmarkt,  showing  the  Town  Hall. 


21G 


THE    TIMES    HISTOHY    OF    THE    WAR. 


fought  his  way  to  the  Bzura  River  and  dug 
himself  in,  he  was  aiming,  among  other  things, 
at  the  salvation  of  Cracow,  and,  therefore, 
of  Silesia  also  ;  for  with  Cracow  in  their 
possession  the  Russians  would  probably  have 
had  Silesia  at  their  mercy. 

Russia  had  two  great  fortified  positions  in 
Poland,  Novo  Georgievsk  and  Iwangorod. 
Warsaw,  though  not  entirely  without  defences, 
was  j^ractically  an  open  town.  Warsaw  was  the 
railway  centre  of  Poland,  but  the  fortified  zone 
on  which  it  relied  was  created  18  miles  away  at 
Novo  Georgievsk,  at  the  point  where  the  Bug, 
swollen  a  few  miles  higher  up  by  the  waters  of 
the  Narew,  flowed  into  the  Vistula.  It  was 
the.  usual  circle  of  detached  forts,  and  was 
exactly  120  miles  from  Thorn.  The  forts  of 
Novo  Georgievsk  were  on  a  plateau  which  com- 
manded the  channels  of  the  rivers  for  many 
miles.  As  it  lay  on  the  right  (or  north)  bank 
of  the  Vistula,  the  Germans  never  came  into 
contact  with  it  dioring  their  repeated  attempts 
upon  Warsaw.  It  effectually  blocked  any 
prospect  of  advance  on  the  north  bank,  and 
compelled  them  to  select  a  line  of  advance  to 
the  south  of  the  river,  through  Lodz  and 
Lowicz.  They  were  checked  at  the  Bzura  and 
the  Rawa  on  their  second  advance  in  December, 
but  had  they  made  good  the  passage  of  these 
rivers  they  would  still  have  had  terrific 
obstacles   to    overcome.     Marshes    and   woods 


extending  for  a  long  way  from  the  left  bank  of 
the  Vistula  gave  some  protection  to  the  capital, 
but  the  Russians  had  enormously  strengthened 
these  areas  by  an  elaborate  entrenched  line 
midway  between  the  Bzura  and  Warsaw.  This 
series  of  entrenched  positions,  which  came  to 
be  known  as  the  Blonie  line,  from  the  village 
through  -which  it  passed,  was  about  18 
miles  due  west  of  Warsaw.  It  was  believed  that 
the  Blonie  line  could  be  held  for  almost  any 
length  of  time,  owing  to  the  support  it  would 
receive  from  Warsaw.  Iwangorod  was  an 
entrenched  camp  64  miles  south-east  of  War- 
saw, at  the  jimction  of  the  River  Wieprz  with 
the  Vistula.  It  had  nine  forts  on  the  right 
bank  and  tlu-ee  on  the  left,  and  it  was  near 
Iwangorod  that  von  Hindenburg's  initial 
attempt  to  seize  the  line  of  the  Vistula  first 
broke  down.  About  150  irdles  to  the  east  of 
Warsaw,  on  the  River  Bug,  was  Brest-Litovsk, 
an  immense  supply  depot  ringed  with  forts, 
which  was  the  real  base  of  the  Russian  opera- 
tions in  Poland.  Warsaw,  Novo  Georgievsk, 
Iwangorod,  and  Brest-Litovsk  were  sometimes 
described  as  "  the  Polish  Quadrilateral,"  but 
Warsaw  had  no  pretensions  to  the  strength  of 
the  other  places. 

When  in  futiu-e  years  historians  pronounce  a 
final  verdict  upon  the  military  and  political 
strategy  of  the  war,  it  will  probably  be  declared 
that  the  greatest  of  the  manv  mistakes  made 


WARSAW. 
A  view  of  the  Vistula. 


i 


THE     TIMES    HT  STORY    OF    THE    WAE 


217 


KONIGSBERG. 


by  Germany  was  her  decision  to  hack  through 
Belgium.  Frona  that  initial  blunder  most 
of  her  other  mistakes  followed  in  a  natural 
sequence.  Germany's  plan  of  campaign,  com- 
pendiously stated,  was  to  overthrow  France 
first,  and  to  settle  with  Russia  afterwards.  She 
would  probably  have  had  better  success  if  she 
had  reversed  her  plan.  It  was  the  supposed 
need  for  crushing  France  first  which  led  to  the 
invasion  of  Belgium,  with  all  the  evil  results 
(from  the  purely  German  point  of  view)  which 
ensued.  Germany  did  not  crush  France,  she 
found  herself  committed  in  the  west  to  an 
enormous  front  of  dangerous  length,  and  by 
her  brutal  treatment  of  Belgium  she  alienated 
the  sympathy  of  neutral  nations  throughout  the 
world.  Had  she  delivered  her  first  great  attack 
in  the  east,  she  might  conceivably  have  para- 
lyzed Russia  and  then  turned  westward  with 
greater  prospect  of  success  ;  but  the  whole 
.subject  is  only  a  matter  of  conjectiire.  By  the 
course  Germany  took  she  deprived  herself  of 
any  chance  of  ever  achieving  her  full  purpose. 
Probably  \n  any  case,  she  never  had  any 
chance  of  complete  success  from  the  time 
England  entered  the  lists,  a  consideration  which 
sufficiently  accounts  for  the  "  Hymn  of  Hate." 


The  German  plans  on  the  eastern  frontier 
were  largely  based  on  the  assumption  that  the 
Russian  mobilization  would  be  slow.  The 
German  Staff  seem  to  have  proposed  to  hold 
East  Prussia  and  the  frontier  from  Thorn  to 
Galicia,  but  not  to  undertake  at  first  any 
offensive  operations  on  a  large  scale.  The 
Austro -Hungarian  armies  in  Galicia  were 
instructed  to  push  northward  into  Poland  in 
the  direction  of  Warsaw,  and  eastward  into 
Volhynia,  in  the  direction  of  Kieff.  The  main 
duty  of  the  Austrians  cleirly  was  to  keep  busy 
such  Russian  forces  as  were  available.  It  was 
even  hoped  that  the  Austrian  columns  based  on 
Lemberg  might  take  Kieff,  for  the  calculation 
was  that  the  Russians  would  be  to  a  great 
extent  preoccupied  by  the  Polish  insurrection 
which  Berlin  and  Vienna  confidently  expected. 
If  the  1st  Austrian  Army,  based  on  Przemysl, 
succeeded  in  marching  tlirough  Lublin  and 
got  near  to  Warsaw,  then  the  Gernians  would 
have  made  a  supporting  move  from  Thorn 
towards  the  Polish  capital.  But  all  these 
hopes  were  largely  conditional,  and  the  broad 
purpose  of  the  Germanic  Powt>rs  was  suuply 
to  keep  the  Russian  armies  contained  while 
the  flower  of  the  German  Active  Armv  rushed 


218 


Till-:     TIMES    HlSTOliY     of     THE    WAR. 


CRACOW. 


through  Belgium  and  Xorthern  France  and  took 
I'aris. 

Nothing  happened  on  the  hnes  that  the 
Gennan  Staff  presupposed.  It  is  ti'ue  that  the 
Austrian  advance  from  Przeniysl  drew  very  near 
to  Lubhn,  but  the  Austrians  were  soon  hurrying 
back  to  their  own  territory.  The  march  on 
Ivieff  remained  nothing  but  a  paper  programme, 
for  the  invasion  of  Volhjniia  ended  as  abruptly 
as  it  had  begun,  \^^lat  completely  upset  the 
German  calculations  was  the  swiftness  and 
steadiness  of  the  Russian  mobihzation,  which 
astonished  the  whole  ^\orld.  Before  the  war 
had  been  in  progress  many  days,  powerful  and 
impetuous  Russian  armies  were  pouring  into 
East  Prussia  and  Galicia,  clearing  the  flanks 
of  Poland.  Until  von  Hindenburg  won  his 
signal  victory  at  Tannenberg  the  Russians 
were  carrying  all  before  them.  Tannenberg 
partly  paralyzed  Russian  strategj"  for  a  tune, 
but  it  never  stopped  the  persistent  Russian 
invasion  of  Galicia,  nor  did  it  prevent  the  Rvis- 
sSans  from  entering  East  Prussia  again  as  soon 
as  they  were  ready.  The  whole  probleni  which 
Russia  had  to  solve  was  to  clear  both  her  flanks, 
and  then  to  take  Cracow.  To  that  combined 
purpose  she  recurred  again  and  again,  and  she 
never  reallv  nhnndoTied  it  for  a  moment,  even 


when  Central  and  Southern  Poland  were 
swarming  with  German  troops  and  the  people 
of  Warsaw  were  preparing  for  flight.  Through- 
out the  whole  of  the  first  six  months"  cam- 
I^aigning,  Cracow  wa.s  the  lodestone  that 
attracted  the  Russians.  Cracow  was  the  heart 
of  the  RiLSsian  problem.  ^Vhile  Cracow  le- 
mained  untaken.  no  advance  on  the  grand  scale 
into  either  Prussia  or  Hungary  was  possible, 
while  the  chance  of  reaching  Vienna  was  too 
remote  to  be  even  discu.ssed.  With  Cracow  in 
Russian  hands  the  whole  situation  would  be 
changed.  The  roads  through  Silesia  to  Berlin^ 
or  through  the  Moravian  Gat«  to  Vienna, 
would  become  open.  Hungary  could  be  raided 
to  the  gates  of  Budapest.  There  could  be  an 
advance  in  force  along  the  line  of  the  Wart  a  to 
Posen  and  beyond,  without  fear  of  a  flank 
attack.  The  difficulties  of  the  invasion  of 
East  Prussia  would  largely  be  overcome,  because 
it  was  reasonable  to  suppose  that  in  such  an 
event  the  German  forces  m  East  Prussia  would 
soon  be  compelled  to  fall  back,  in  order  to  avoid 
being  cut  off.  The  key  to  Russian  strategy 
was  Cracow,  and  to  take  that  city  was  the  prin- 
cipal problem  for  which  a  solution  had  to  be 
foimd.  This  was  the  theoretical  side  of  the 
Russian  movements.     In  practice  the  Russian 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


219 


task  eventually  resolved  itself  into  the  problem 
ol'  clearing  Poland  of  an  exceedingly  stubborn 
invader. 

Russia  soon  found  that  it  was  easier  to 
mobilize  her  millions  than  to  arm  and  equip 
them  and  place  them  in  the  battle-line.  All 
the  perplexities  and  obscurities  of  the  early 
months  of  the  Russian  campaign  turned  upon 
the  difficulty  of  converting  mobilized  men  into 
efficient  combatants,  clothed  in  imiforms,  fur- 
nished with  rifles  and  aitununition,  and  ready 
to  fight.  The  actual  mobilization  was  a  magni- 
ficent piece  of  organization.  From  the  farthest 
confines  of  the  Russian  Empire  came  inter- 
minable train -loads  of  men  eager  to  give  their 
lives  for  the  Tsar.  Mr.  Stephen  Graham 
related  how  he  was  in  a  village  in  the  Altai 
Mountains,  in  the  very  heart  of  Asia,  when  the 
mobilization  order  arrived.  The  men  knew 
nothing  of  the  troubles  of  Europe,  and  had  not 
even  been  told  against  whom  the  Tsar  had  gone 
to  war.  They  saddled  their  ponies  and  rode 
off  cheerfully,  never  questioning  the  call.  The 
cities  in  the  rear  of  the  line  of  conflict  became 
choked  with  men,  but  it  was  long  before  they 
were  all  able  to  march  forth  as  fighting  units. 
The  supply  of  clothing,  of  arms,  and  above  all 
of  ammunition,  was  insufficient  for  the  count- 
less hosts  which  had  been  gathered.  The 
factories  of  Russia  worked  without  ceasing. 
The  Allies  did  their  best  to  supply  deficiencies, 
so  long  as  there  was  any  chance  of  getting 
supplies  into  the  country.  Japan  sent  great 
quantities  of  warlike  stores.  Huge  purchases 
were  made  from  neutrals.  Yet  it  was  a  very 
long  time  before  Rvissia  was  able  to  overcome 
her  manifold  needs  ;  and  the  lack  of  material, 
and  not  the  fighting  qualities  of  her  troops,  was 
the  chief  explanation  of  such  reverses  as  she 


occasionally  encoimtered  in  the  earlier  stages 
of  the  campaign.  She  had  to  fight  on  an 
incredibly  long  front.  Her  actual  fighting  line 
was  at  some  points  dangerously  thin.  She 
was  particularly  short  of  big  gun  ammunition, 
a  difficulty  which  soon  hampered  all  the  com- 
batants alike.  A  shortage  of  the  means  of 
waging  war  lay  at  the  back  of  all  her  move- 
ments, and  the  knowledge  gnawed  at  the  hearts 
of  her  commanders.  In  course  of  time  these 
obstacles  were  to  a  great  degree  overcome,  and 
it  was  calculated  that  by  April,  1915,  she  would 
be  very  near  her  maximum  strength. 

The  war  brought  a  solidarity  to  the  Russian 
nation  such  as  it  had  never  known  before. 
Never  had  Russia  been  so  vmited.  There  were 
strikes  in  progress  at  Petrograd  and  in  other 
cities  when  the  hour  of  conflict  came.  Civil 
discontent  was  rife,  and  anxious  observers 
believed  that  the  coimtry  was  on  the  verge  of 
another  internal  upheaval.  It  was  indeed,  but 
not  in  the  form  which  the  vigilant  watchers  in 
Berlin  had  predicted.  They  had  taken  due 
note  of  the  surface  symptoms  wliich  were 
plainly  visible,  and  believed  that  the  war 
would  find  Russia  rent  asunder  by  disorder. 
They  failed  to  iinderstand  the  psychology  of 
the  Russian  people,  just  as  they  failed  to  under- 
stand ever^  other  nation  around  them.  The 
strikes  at  Petrograd  vanished  in  a  night,  and 
the  Cossacks  who  had  been  brought  into  the 
city  to  preserve  order  in  the  Nevsky  Prospekt 
and  the  other  main  thoroughfares  found  them- 
selves acclaimed  by  the  populace.  One  of  them 
was  heard  to  say  to  a  comrade  :  "  Is  it  possible 
that  these  people  are  cheering  ns,  or  am  I 
dreaming  ?  "  The  Germans  and  Austrians  had 
imagined  that  the  Russian  crowds  would  demon- 
strate against  the  war,  and  clamour  for  peace 


THURN. 


KONIGSBERG*^ 


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THEATRE    OF    WAR. 


221 


222 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


at  any  price.  \^Tien  the  fateful  day  came 
immense  throngs  were  kneeHng  in  front  of  tJie 
Winter  Palace,  and  chanting  the  majestic  and 
solemn  strains  of  the  Russian  National  Anthem. 
For  the  first  time  for  a  century  a  Tsar  of  Russia 
looked  out  upon  a  Russian  Empire  one  and 
indivisible,  animated  by  a  common  purpose, 
stung  from  indifference  into  an  eager  desire  to 
face  a  common  foe.  In  the  Russo-Japanese 
War  some  of  the  Russian  troops  had  to  be 
driven  into  the  troop  trains  at  the  point  of  the 
bayonet.  In  August,  1914,  the  Ru.ssian  regi- 
ments marched  forth  gladly,  fired  by  a  burning 
desire  to  take  up  the  biirden  of  a  war  which 
appealed  more  strongly  to  the  people  than 
any  campaign  in  which  Russia  had  ever 
engaged. 

One  of  the  first  fruits  of  the  moral  change 
which  Russia  underwent  was  the  entire  and 
ruthless  prohibition  of  the  liquor  traffic.  The 
Tsar's  imperative  order  was  accepted  without  a 
murmur,  and  was  regarded  as  a  sjmibol  of  the 
transformation  which  the  country  had  under- 
gone. It  cost  the  Russian  Exchequer  a 
revenue  of  £68,000,000,  but  Ministers  were 
speedily  heard  declaring  that  it  was  worth  the 
price  because  of  the  increased  efficiency  it  pro- 
duced. Cheap  vodka  had  been  the  bane  of  the 
populace.  The  ravages  of  drink  in  Russia 
cannot  be  compared  with  the  consequences 
of  Uquor  consumption  in  the  United  Kingdom, 
because  in  Russia  the  effects  went  considerably 
deeper.  Really  good  vodka,  drunk  in  small 
quantities,  was  not  a  particularly  pernicious 
beverage.  A  tiny  glass  or  two,  taken  with  a 
dish  of  fresh  caviare  of  a  delicacy  unobtainable 
outside  Russia,  had  been  said  to  be  "as  accept- 
able as  strawberries  and  cream."  The  cheap 
spirits  more  widely  consumed  in  Russia  were  of 
very  different  quality,  and  the  quantities  drunk 
both  unpoverished  and  debilitated  masses  of 
the  people.  At  first  the  Tsar's  decree  only 
applied  to  the  period  of  mobilization,  but  later 
it  was  extended  for  the  duration  of  the  war. 
The  result  was  magical.  From  the  Baltic  to 
the  Pacific  not  a  public -house  was  open,  and 
the  order  was  rigidly  enforced  to  the  letter. 
It  was  accepted  patiently  and  without  complaint 
by  the  entire  population.  "  The  result  was," 
wrote  an  observer,  "  that  the  army  and  the 
people  were  serious  and  sober  when  they  faced 
the  task  imposed  upon  them.  Rioting  and 
dissipation  were  things  of  the  past,  both  at  the 


front  and  in  the  capital."     Such  wa.s  the  prave 
and  earnest  mood  in  which  Russia  braced  her 
self  for  her  tremendous  task. 

The  story  of  the  first  few  months  of  fighting 
in  the  eastern  theatre  falls  naturally  into  certain 
definite  sections.     There  was  first  the  Russian 
invasion    of    East    Prussia,    followed    by    von 
Hindenburg's  retaliatory  stroke,  the  battle  of 
Tannenberg,  and  the  unsuccessful  attempt  of 
the  Germans  to  reach  and  to  cross  the  River 
Xiemen.     Then  came,  practically  a.s  a  separate 
episode,  the  Riissian    invasion  of  Galicia  and 
the  first  defeats  of  the  Austrian  armies.     This 
was  preceded  by  the  brief  Austrian  invasion 
of    Poland,    after    which    followed    the    swift 
Russian    advance,    the    fall    of    Lemberg,    the 
investment  of  Przemysl,  and  all  the  confused 
fighting  which  carried  the  Russians  to  the  crest 
of  the  Carpathians,  and  even  enabled  them  to 
make   brief   incxirsions   into   Hungary.     These 
first  operations  of  the  Russians  in  Galicia  were 
as  remarkable  and  as  complete  as  the  swift  Ger- 
man  invasion   of   France   in    1870.     The   next 
extremely  definite  movement  was  von  Hinden- 
burg's first  invasion  of  Central  and  Southern 
Poland,   which   very   nearly   reached   Warsaw, 
and  actually  reached  the  Upper  Vistula  near 
Iwangorod.     It   was    accompanied    by    fierce, 
simultaneous  conflicts  between  Aiistrians  and 
Russians   on  the   line   of  the   San.     AH   these 
movements   collapsed,   and  the   failure   of   the 
Austrian  and  German  offensive  had  as  its  sequel 
a  general  withdrawal.     The  Russians  in  their 
turn  then  struck  south-westward  from  Warsaw, 
and  westward  through  Galicia,  at  Cracow.    They 
had  all  but  reached  the  city  when  von  Hinden- 
burg,  who  had  concentrated  afresh,  rushed  once 
more  at  Warsaw,  the  movement  constituting 
the   second    German   invasion    of    Poland.     It 
instantly  compelled  the  Russians  to  fall  back 
and  straighten  their  line.     They  held  the  Ger- 
mans before  Lodz  and  around  Lowicz  for  many 
days,  and  at  one  moment  ahnost  succeeded  in 
encircling  two  German  army  corps,  a  brilliant 
effort  which  raised  unfounded  expectations  in 
the  west.     Eventually  the  Germans  dug  them- 
selves in  on  the  line  of  the  rivers  Bziu-a  and 
Rawa,  south  of  the  Vistula,  and  some  distance 
west  of  Warsaw.     The  New  Year  found  them 
still   tenaciously   entrenched   in   tliis   position. 
All  these  operations  will  be  related  in  detail, 
and  in  the  order  noted,  in  the  chapters  which 
follow. 


CHAPTER   LVI. 

THE  FIRST  INVASION  OF  EAST 

PRUSSIA. 


Motives  of  Russian  Strategy — The  Russo- Prussian  Frontier — Possible  Routes  and  Ter- 
rain— First  Russian  Successes — Their  Effect  in  Germany — Von  Hindenburg  to  the  Rescue 
— Hindenburg's  Career — German  Victory  of  Tannenberg — Its  Importance  and  Conse- 
quences—The Subsequent  German  Advance — Russia's  Revenge  on  the  Niemen — Battle. 
OF  AuGusTowo — Results  of  First  Five  Months  of  War. 


EARLY  in  1914  the  reoganization  of  the 
Russian  military  system  had  already 
gone  so  far  that  the  General  Staff 
was  able  to  announce  that  it  would 
adopt  an  offensive  strategy  in  the  next  European 
war.  The  Russian  tradition  that  an  aggressor 
is  best  defeated  by  luring  him  into  the  vast 
distances  of  the  interior,  there  to  be  dealt  with 
by  Generals  January  and  February,  asserted 
itself  again  and  again  during  the  vicissitudes  of 
the  eventful  struggle  on  the  Eastern  Front, 
but  it  was  not  the  dominant  idea  in  the  early 
days  of  August.  An  invasion  of  East  Prussia 
presented  itself  as  a  tempting  and  inevitable 
task.  The  Russians  knew  that  the  Germans 
had  underestimated  the  rapidity  of  their 
mobilization.  They  knew  that  two  factors 
had  combined  to  induce  the  Germans  to  post 
inadequate  forces  in  East  Prussia — the  im- 
perious need  of  securing  an  early  triumph 
in  France,  and  the  habitual  German  tendency 
to  undervalue  Russian  efficiency.  A  march 
into  East  Prussia  was  all  but  imposed  upon 
them.  It  was  natural  to  argue  that  before 
any  advance   through   Poland   itself   could   be 


contemplated,  the  northern  flanlc  must  be 
cleared.  Every  army  has  its  historical  memo- 
ries which  are  apt  to  govern  the  thinking  of  its 
chiefs.  By  this  route  Russian  armies  had 
advanced  when  they  occupied  Berlin  in  the 
Seven  Years'  War,  and  again  when  they 
pursued  Napoleon  after  Moscow.  Strategists 
have  always  a  maximum  and  a  minimum  object 
before  them.  Civilians  and  journalists  talked 
gaily  of  marching  through  East  Prussia  to 
Berlin,  and  in  the  ranks  of  the  Russian  Army 
that  ambition  gave  a  naeaning  to  their  advance. 
Scientific  soldiers  were  more  cautious,  for  they 
knew  very  well  that  the  defensive  lines  of  the 
Vistula,  with  the  great  fortresses  of  Danzig, 
Graudenz,  and  Thorn  would  not  be  carried 
without  efforts  and  sacrifices  inadvisable  at 
this  stage  of  the  campaign.  The  lesser  objects 
seemed  none  the  less  sufficient  to  justify  the 
invasion.  It  was  mucli  to  clear  the  northern 
flank  of  Poland  and  well  worth  while  to  occupy 
this  thriving  province,  with  its  prosperous 
agricultui'e  and  its  population  of  two  million 
inliabitants.  If  no  further  u\ditary  use  were 
made  of  the  invasion,  a  province  securely  held 


223 


224 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE     WAR. 


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THE    RUSSO-PRUSSIAN    FRONTIER. 


is  always  an  article  of  barter  when  the  moment 
of  settlement  arrives.  East  Prussia  was, 
moreover,  no  ordinary  German  province.  At 
Konigsberg  was  the  seat  of  the  Prussian 
dukes,  and  there  the  King  of  Prussia  was 
-crowned.  The  gentry  of  the  province,  descended 
from  the  Knights  of  the  Teutonic  Order,  were 
the  flower  and  type  of  that  stubborn,  limited, 
but  capable  squirearchy  which  was  the  back- 
bone of  the  Prussian  State  and  the  Prussian 
Army.  A  blow  at  this  outlying  province 
^vas  in  point  of  sentiment  a  direct  thrust  at  the 
heart  of  Prussian  confidence  and  Prussian 
pride. 

The  routes  which  an  invasion  of  East  Prvissia 
>iust  follow  were  dictated  by  the  few  main 
lines  of  communication  of  which  the  Russians 
disposed.  Three  railways  only  crossed  the 
frontier.  The  first  was  the  great  trunk  road 
from  Petrograd  to  Berhn,  which  crossed  the 
River  Niemen  at  the  fortress  of  Kovno,  passed 
the  frontier  at  Wirballen-Eydtkuhnen,  and 
traversed  the  province  tlirough  Insterburg, 
Allenstein  and  Eylau  to  Thorn.  The  second, 
and  least  important  of  the  three,  left  the  main 
Vilna-Warsaw  line  at  Bialystok,  passed  the 
minor  fortress  of  Osowiec,  crossed  the  frontier 
beyond  Grajevo,  and  at  Lyck  entered  the 
intricate  lake  country,  and  continued  to 
Konigsberg.     The  third  line  ran  from  Warsaw 


to  Mlawa,  and  continued  through  Eylau  to 
Danzig.  The  frontier  nowhere  presented  an 
appreciable  obstacle,  nor  had  the  Germans 
been  at  pains  to  fortify  it.  It  was  a  purely 
conventional  line,  which  marked  the  political 
division  of  the  area  between  the  Niemen  and  the 
Vistula.  Nature  knew  nothing  of  it,  and  on 
either  side  stretched  the  same  flat  expanses 
of  heath  and  forest,  of  lake  and  swamp,  varied 
by  fertile  fields  in  which  rye  and  potatoes 
were  grown.  The  intricate  chains  of  lakes 
were  a  formidable  obstacle  to  an  invasion- 
Artificial  obstacles  existed  only  in  the  shape  of 
two  small  forts  (Boyen  and  Lyck)  commanding 
defiles  among  the  Masurian  Lakes.  Konigsberg, 
indeed,  was  a  first-class  ring  fortress,  but  while 
an  invader  would  be  compelled  to  contain  ifc 
and  isolate  it,  it  was  so  situated  that  it  did  not 
interfere  with  the  occupation  of  the  greater 
part  of  the  province. 

The  Russian  plan  of  campaign  provided  for 
the  invasion  of  East  Priossia  by  two  armies 
along  the  two  main  routes.  The  first,  or 
Vilna  Army  concentrated  behind  the  Niemen, 
and  had  its  bases  at  the  fortresses  of  Kovno 
and  Grodno.  The  Second  or  Warsaw  Army 
concentrated  behind  the  river  Narew.  It 
detached  a  portion  of  its  forces  to  penetrate  the 
Masurian  Lakes  by  Bialla  and  Lyck,  but  its 
main  line  of  advance  was  by  Mlawa-Soldau. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


22& 


Both  armies  were  commanded  by  generals  who 
had  made  a  certain  reputation  amid  the  faihires 
of  their  colleagues  in  the  Manchurian  campaign. 

General  Rennenkampf  had  commanded  a 
division  which  included  some  famous  Siberian 
regiments,  which  did  good  service  at  Mukden. 
To  him  fell  the  leadership  of  the  Niemen 
Army  in  the  direct  march  from  the  east  on 
Konigsberg.  The  Narew  Army,  which  invaded 
from  the  south,  was  under  General  Samsonoff, 
an  officer  who  had  won  no  small  popularity 
and  a  considei'able  professional  reputation. 
Born  in  1859,  he  had  passed  from  the  cavalry 
to  the  general  staff.  His  service  had  been  chiefly 
in  Turkestan,  and  he  had  commanded  Siberian 
Cossacks  with  distinction  in  Manchuria. 

The  Niemen  Army  was  the  first  to  encounter 
a  large  force  of  the  enemy,  and  it  will  be  con- 
venient to  consider  its  march  separately 
bearing  in  mind  that  it  was  engaged  in  a  con- 
certed and  converging  invasion,  in  which  it 
was  all  important  to  seciire  the  proper  timing 
of  the  move  from  the  east  with  the  move 
from  the  south.  It  was  a  complete  army, 
and  its  composition  was  as  follows  : 

The  2nd,  3rd,  4th,  and  12th  (active)  Army 
Corps. 

The  3rd  and  4th  Reserve  Divisions. 

Five  Cavalry  Divisions,  including  the  Guard. 

Its  numerical  strength  must  have  been  from 
225,000  to  250,000  men,  and  further  reserves 
were  busily  collected  behind  the  Niemen. 

The  early  days  of  the  campaign,  while  mobili- 
zation continued,  were  employed  in  cavalry 
raids  and  reconnaissances.  The  Germans  only 
once  attempted  an  offensive ;  in  these 
small  affairs  the  enterprise  was  on  the  Russian 
side.  A  Russian  cavalry  division  (the  3rd) 
crossed  the  frontier,  south  of  Eydtkulinen  on 
August  6.  Two  days  later  (the  8th)  a  small 
force  of  Russian  infantry  with  machine  guns 
was  skirmishing  far  to  the  north,  almost  up  to 
the  outskirts  of  the  important  town  of  Tilsit, 
memorable  for  an  historic  meeting  between 
Napoleon  and  the  Tsar  Alexander.  Its  mission 
was  to  destroy  the  railway  line.  A  cavah'y 
reconnaissance  on  a  larger  scale,  in  which  three 
divisions  took  part,'  on  the  10th,  helped  to 
raise  the  spirits  of  the  Russians,  and  gave  con- 
fidence to  its  leaders.  General  Rennenkain{)f 
v/ith  his  Staff  visited  the  fighting  lines,  and  the 
impression  was  general  that  these  skirmishes 
had  dissipated  the  legend  of  German  invinci- 
bility. In  one  of  these  early  engagements  the 
Russian   Cavalry  of   the   Guard    covered  itself 


with  glory.  A  certain  village  in  advance  of 
the  German  lines  was  held  by  a  strong  body  of 
sharpshooters  with  two  field  guns,  which  were 
doing  terrible  cxeciition  at  short  range  against 
the  Riissian  advance.  To  clear  the  village  was 
infantry  work,  but  the  "Gardes  a  Cheval " 
and  the  "  Chevaliers  Gardes "  were  at  hand 
and  ready,  and  the  infantry  was  far  behind. 
Three  squadrons  were  dismoimted.  They  fixed 
the  bayonets,  which  the  Russian  cavalry  carry, 
to  their  carbines,  and  under  the  fire  of  the  two 
gims  and  of  a  distant  battery,  attacked  the  village 
in  open  order,  and  cleared  it  house  by  house. 
They  lost  two-thirds  of  their  officers  in  the  pro- 
cess, but  still  they  advanced,  charging  over  the 
open  space  upon  the  German  lines.  At  the 
psychological  moment  a  mounted  squadron 
was  latmched  on  the  two  guns.  It  sabred  the 
men  who  served  them,  and  then  wheeling  roimd, 
crashed  into  the  flank  of  the  Gterman  infantry 
as  the  three  dismounted  squadrons  reached 
their  front.  The  exploit  was  costly,  but  it  was 
one  of  many  minor  achievements  which  set 
Rennenkampf  s  Army  marching  forward  with 
the  confidence  of  victory. 

The  general  advance  may  be  said  to  have 
begun  on  August   16,  the  seventeenth  dav   of 


GENERAL    SAMSONOFF. 
Killed  !n  East  Prussia. 


22G 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


the    Russian   mobilization.     On    the    17th    the 
RiLssian     van    encountered     the    Gennan     1st 
(Konigsberg)    Army    Corps,    which    fought    a 
delaying    action    at    Stalluponen.       It    was    a 
stubborn  contest  while  it  lasted,  and  the  Ger- 
mans  claimed  to  have  taken  the   improbable 
number   of    3,000  prisoners  with   six  machine 
gun?    before    they    fell    back    on    Gumbimien. 
Here  was  fought  the  first  considerable  battle 
of     this     campaign.     The     lUissian     advance 
covered  a  front   of  about  35  miles,  from  Pil- 
kallen  on  the  north  to  Goldap  on  the  south. 
The  centre  followed  the  line  of  main  road  and 
railway     froin     Stalluponen     to     Gumbinnen. 
The  ground  was  fiat  and  nearly  featvireless,  a 
country  of  rye  and  potato  fields,  with  scattered 
farmhouses,  little  villages  and  windinills.     The 
Russian  left  had  to  clear  and  traverse  the  pine 
\\  oods  which  stretch  for  many  a  mile  east  and 
north    of    the    important    railway   junction    of 
Goldap.     The   Russians  had  at  their  disposal 
four  corps  of  the  active  army  and  two  reserve 
divisions.     The    Germans    had    only    one    first 
line  corps  (the  1st)  with  two  reserve  corps,  and 
were  therefore  outnumbered  by  at  least  five  to 
thi-ee.     They  relied  in  this,  as  in  all  the  fighting 
on  the  Eastern  Front,  mainly  on  their  second 
and  third  line   troops.     A  force  so  manifestly 
inferior  could  only  hope  to  fight  an  obstinate 
delaying     action.     The     dispositions     in     this 
battle  presented  few  features   of  interest.     It 
began  on  the  extreme  right  of  the  Russian  lines 
at    Pilkallen.     The    little    town    was    cleared 
without  much  difficulty,  and  the  Germans  \\  ho 
held     it    fell     back    south-westwards    towards 
Gumbiimen.     The  main  battle  was  fought  next 
day    (the    20th)    before    Gumbinnen.     It    is    a 
picturesque  country  town,  with  many  fine  old 
gabled  houses,  dating  from  the  early  eighteenth 
century,  when   it   was   colonized   by   Austrian 
Protestant    refugees    from    Salzburg.     It    had 
14,000  inhabitants,   and  was   distant   22  miles 
from  the   Russian  frontier.     General  Rermen- 
kampf's    tactics    were    extremely    simple.     He 
had  a  numerical  superiority  which  inight  have 
suggested    the    possibility    of    an    enveloping 
movement.     He    preferred    a    straightforward 
frontal    attack    on    the    enemy's    centre.     The 
fighting  iDegan  at  dawn  with  an  artillery  duel, 
bvxt   the   Russian   infantry   charged   with   irre- 
sistible ardour  without  waiting  for  much  in  the 
way     of     artillery'     preparation,     and     carried 
position  after  position  by  the  use  of  the  bayonet 
and  the  hand  grenade.     The  Germans  counter- 
attacked ^^■ith  stubborn  coiu^age,  and  some  of 


the  ground  changed  hand.s  .several  times  in  the 
course  of  the  day.  One  Cierman  brigade  was 
caught  in  a  cross-fire  of  rifles  and  Maxims,  and 
left  3,000  dead  on  the  field.  The  fighting  la.sted 
fourteen  hoiu-s,  and  it  was  only  at  nightfall 
that  the  Germans  withdrew.  The  German 
wings  held  out  longer,  and  von  Fran9ois  (the 
general  of  Huguenot  descent,  who  commanded 
tlie  Konigsberg  corps,  and  its  two  auxiliary 
corps)  niay  even  have  hoped  to  outflank  on  the 
north.  A  German  cavalry  division  retook 
Pilkallen  on  the  20th.  It  was  expelled  again 
on  the  21st  by  a  superior  force  of  Ru-ssian 
cavalry,  and  had  much  difficulty  in  rejoining 
the  main  army.  Roiuid  Goldap  also  the 
fighting  continued  obstinately  throughout  the 
21st.  The  1st  Corps,  with  its  supports,  had 
meanwhile  fallen  back  through  the  town  of 
Gimibinnen,  and  thence  on  Insterburg. 

It  is  hard  to  say  whether  von  Francois 
could  have  achieved  anj-thing  by  attempting 
a  fiu-ther  delaying  action  in  the  prepared 
positions  east  of  Insterbiu"g.  The  place  was 
an  important  railway  centre,  the  junction  of 
lines  to  Konigsberg,  Tilsit,  Goldap,  and  above 
all  the  key  of  the  vital  south-western  line  to 
AUenstein  and  Thorn.  It  was  a  dignified 
country  town,  with  a  fine  market-square,  and 
about  twice  the  population  of  Gumbinnen 
(31,000).  It  would  have  been  worth  much  to 
delay  Rermenkampf  here,  but  the  importance 
even  of  these  railway's  might  be  exaggerated. 
The  East  Prussian  system  was  so  amply 
designed  that  Konigsberg  was  still  very  far 
from  being  isolated,  even  when  it  lost  touch 
with  Insterbiu-g.  The  Germans,  moreover, 
had  lost  heavily  in  men  at  Gumbinnen,  and 
they  could  not  afford  to  repeat  that  loss  in- 
definitely. The  Russians  took  12  field 
gims  and  400  prisoners  there,  some  of  whom 
were  Poles  who  boasted  that  they  had  not  fired 
a  shot  against  their  brother  Slavs.  One  notes 
the  puzzimg  statement  in  the  German  oflficial 
news,  that  von  Francois  on  his  side  took  8,000 
prisoners  and  some  heavy  gvms.  An  army 
which  elects  to  retire  may  none  the  less  have 
acliieved  some  local  tactical  success,  but  this 
German  claim  was  improbably  high.  A  re 
tirement  was  ordained,  but  tlie  Germans  niust 
have  imagined  tliat  they  had  inflicted  a  severe 
check  on  Rermenkampf' s  advance.  A  notice 
posted  up  in  Insterburg  stated  that  the  German 
troops  must  "  obey  a  superior  order  to  march 
elsewhere,"  but  told  the  inhabitants  that  the 
Russians   could   hardlv   arrive   within   a    week. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


227 


EFFECTS    OF    RUSSIAN    BOMBAKDMEN T    IN    EAST    PRUSSIA. 

Top  left:  A  wrecked  street;  top  right:  The  last  German  Patrol  leaving;  centre:   Irussian  refugees 

leaving  their  homes  ;  bottom  left  :  Barracks  at  Soldau  ;  bottom  right  :   A   ruined  town. 


22S 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


GENERAL    RENNENKAMPF    (marked  with  a  cross)    AND    HIS    STAFF. 

In  a  town  in  East  Prussia. 


and  counselled  them  to  remain  in  their  houses 
and  welcome  the  invaders  with  "  hospitality." 
The  Russians  reached  Insterbvirg  in  point  of 
fact  late  on  the  23rd,  and  by  the  24th  had  occu- 
pied it  in  force.  Henceforward  Rennenkampf's 
advance  was  practically  unopposed.  His  left 
wing  pressed  on  from  Goldap  to  Darkelimen, 
and  southwards  to  Angerburg,  on  the  edge  of 
the  lake  countrj-.  Thence  it  followed  the 
cross-country  strategical  railway  Nordenburg- 
Gerdauen-Allenburg.  On  the  north  it  held 
Tilsit,  and  the  Tilsit-Konigsberg  railway  as 
far  as  Labiau.  On  the  main  line  to  Konigsberg 
it  reached  Tapiau.  The  northern  portion  of 
East  Prussia  was  securely  held  as  far  as  the 
River  Alle,  and  Rennenkampf's  cavalry  pushed 
doA\-nwards  as  far  as  Rastenburg  and  Korschan 
Junction.  The  claim  was  currently  made  for 
it  in  the  Press  that  it  had  "  invested  "  Konigs- 
berg. It  hardly  did  that,  for  it  left  open  the 
vital  Konigsberg-Danzig  railway.  But  cer- 
tainly it  threatened  Konigsberg,  and  might 
soon  expect  to  be  able  to  contain  its  garrison, 
and  to  press  on  towards  Danzig  and  the  Vistula. 
It  held  the  main  railway  line,  but  the  use  which 
it  could  make  of  tliis  facihty  was  limited.  The 
gauge  of  the  Russian  differs  from  that  of  the 
German  railway  system,  and  though  some  rolling 


stock  had  been  captiu-ed,  it  is  not  probable 
that  it  sufficed  for  all  the  needs  of  a  great  army. 
The  prospect  was  dazzling,  for  the  only  con- 
siderable German  force  in  this  portion  of  East 
Prussia  had  been  defeated,  and  no  longer 
ventvu-ed  to  give  battle.  The  retirement 
of  von  Francois  from  Insterburg  had  more- 
over been  hasty,  and  the  road  to  Konigsberg 
was  littered  with  quantities  of  abandoned 
material. 

Meanwhile  the  Army  of  the  Xarew  was  ad- 
vancing rapidly  and  successfully  from  the  south. 
It  was  of  about  the  same  strength  as  the  Army  : 
of   the   Niemen,    and    consisted    of    five   army  ■ 
corps  of    the  active   army,  and  three  cavalry 
divisions,  and  cannot  have  fallen  far  short  of 
a  total  of  a  quarter  of  a  miUion  men.     General 
Samsonoff  had  to  operate  in  a  niiich  more  diffi-  '. 
cult  country  than  General  Rennenliampf — the 
region  of   the   Masurian  Lakes.     He   advanced  , 
along  three  lines  : 

(1)  North-west  by  the  Warsaw -Mia  wa-Soldau 
railway  ; 

(2)  To  Lyck  by  the  Osowiec  line,  and  thence 
by  a  detour  south  of  the  larger  lakes  to  Johan- 
nisburg ; 

(3)  To  Lyck,  and  thence  by  a  still  wider 
detoiu"  above  Lake  Spirding. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAF. 


229 


THE    FLKJHT    FROM    EAST    PRUSSIA. 
1.     A  home  in  the  fields.  2.      Refugees  in   Berlin. 

3.     On  the  wav  to  Berlin.  4.     On  the  road. 


280 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GENERAL    VON    FRANCOIS. 


9' 


The  Russians  found  the  enemy  in  very 
inferior  numbers.  In  the  early  stages  of  this 
in^•asion  only  one  corps  of  the  active  arn'iy,  the 
20th,  was  present  in  thLs  region,  but  as  it  was 
stationed  in  times  of  peace  at  Allenstein,  it  had 
at  least  the  advantage  of  famiharity  with  this 
diflficult  country.  The  German  defence  de- 
pended for  the  rest  upon  Landwehr  troops, 
the  middle-aged  men  of  the  countryside, 
called  to  the  colours  to  defend  their  own  soil. 
A  brigade  of  Landwehr  fought  a  delaying  action 
at  Soldau,  and  were  of  covu"se  forced  back  by 
superior  numbers  of  younger  troops.  Neiden 
burg  was  next  won.  Allenstein  was  taken  by 
the  Russians  after  a  stiff  contest  with  the 
Land%\ehr.  The  hardest  of  this  series  of  en- 
gagements was  at  Franlcenau,  where  Samson- 
off' s  right  encoiuitered  the  German  20th  Corps, 
entrenched  in  strong  prepared  positions  with 
rifle  pits  and  \\ire  entanglements.  It  held 
them  for  two  days  (the  23rd  and  24th)  and  then 
gave  way  partly  to  the  determined  frontal 
attacks  of  the  Russians,  and  partly  to  an  out- 
flanking march  of  the  Russian  right.  Its 
retreat  to  Osterode  was  some%vhat  hasty,  and 
it  was  forced  to  abandon  guns,  stores,  and 
prisoners.  On  the  same  day  that  Rennen- 
kampf  entered  Insterburg,  Samsonoff  had 
broken  the  resistance  of  the  weak  forces  whicli 


opposed  the  advance  of  the  Narew  Army. 
His  cavalry  swung  round  by  Sensburg  and 
Bischofsburg,  as  far  as  Rothfhess,  a  junction 
station  on  the  main  line,  from  which  a  branch 
lino  ran  up  to  Konigsberg.  The  main  line 
was  also  held  more  solidly  at  Allenstein,  an 
important  junction  and  garrison  town,  an  air- 
ship station,  and  the  headquarters  of  the  20th 
Corps.  The  Russians,  in  short,  had  driven  the 
enemy  from  all  that  part  of  East  Prussia  which 
lay  east  and  south  of  the  main  railway  line. 
On  the  north  they  were  far  to  the  west  of  it. 
Rennenkampf's  front  now  faced  south-west, 
on  the  line  Friedland-Gerdauen-Xordenburg- 
Angerburg.  Samsonoff  occupied  the  triangle 
Soldau- Allenstein-Frankenau.  The  intervening 
space  was  over-run  by  their  cavalry,  which  had 
nearly,  but  not  quite,  met.  In  a  few  days  the 
converging  invasions  would  meet,  and  two 
Russian  armies  totalling  nearly  half-a-million 
men  would  be  threatening  the  lines  of  the 
Vistula.  The  Germans  had  lost  the  use  of 
nearly  one-half  of  their  elaborate  system  of 
strategic  railways,  and  the  intricate  defences  of 
the  lake-country  had  not  availed  to  stay  the 
invaders. 

It  was  a  black  week  for  German  confidence 
A\  hich  opened  on  Sunday  the  23rd.  The  inva- 
sion of  their  territory  was  a  heavy  blow  to  their 
military  pride.  They  were  now  suffering 
something  of  what  they  had  themselves  in- 
flicted on  the  Belgians.  The  civil  population 
of  East  Prussia  was  everywhere  fleeing  before 
the  invaders.  The  townsmen  poured  into 
Konigsberg  and  Danzig.  The  peasants  packed 
a  few  belongings  in  their  carts  and  trudged  the 
roads  in  vast  disconsolate  cohuuns,  impeding 
the  movements  of  the  troops  and  dislocating 
the  supplies  of  food.  Feu"  of  these  fugitives 
waited  for  the  appearance  of  the  Russians  :  they 
fled  from  their  owai  terror  of  the  Cossac  ks.  For 
the  modern  German  the  Cossack  was  still  what 
he  was  in  the  days  of  the  Seven  Years'  War  and 
the  Napoleonic  campaigns,  a  pitiless  and  un- 
disciplined marauder.  The  usvial  tales  of 
atrocity,  miirder,  and  mutilation  were  told  with 
the  usual  levity.  Some  frontier  towns  were 
destroyed  by  artillery  or  burned  as  a  punitive 
measure  against  civiUan  combatants.  There 
were,  of  course,  the  usual  requisitions  of  food. 
Some  pillaging  there  naay  have  been  when 
houses  were  found  deserted,  but  the  German 
newspapers  stated  quite  candidly  that  in  the 
to\vns  at  least  the  Russians  paid  for  what  they 
took,  and  one  case  is  cited  in  which  a  Cossack 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


231 


convicted  of  robbery  was  promptly  shot  as  an 
example.  The  Mayor  of  Insterburg,  Herr  von 
Sachs,  wrote  an  article  in  wliich  he  condemned 
the  senseless  cowardice  of  the  fugitives,  and 
went  on  to  eulogise  the  "  civility  and  con- 
■iideration "  of  the  Cossacks,  the  respectful 
behaviour  of  the  Russian  troops  generally 
towards  v/omen,  summing  up  with  a  formal 
statement  that  to  his  personal  knowledge  the 
behaviour  of  the  Cossacks  towards  the  civil 
population  was  "  exemplary  and  irreproach- 
able."' The  panic,  none  the  less,  was  general,  and 
even  Berlin  was  soon  called  upon  to  pro\'ide 
for  many  thousands  of  refugees,  who  arrived 
from  the  occupied  territory.  So  little  secure 
did  the  Germans  feel,  even  on  the  lines  of  the 
Vistula,  that  the  sluices  at  Elbing  were  opened 
and  the  country  flooded.  An  almost  pathetic 
telegram  from  the  Kaiser  reflected  the  general 
mood.  It  expressed  his  "deep  sympathy" 
with  his  "  loyal  provinces  of  East  Prussia  "  on 
the  infliction  of  this  invasion,  and  bade  them 
"  steadfastly  believe  in  the  help  of  the  living 
God,  who  up  to  the  present  has  rendered  the 
German  nation  such  wonderful  assistance  in  its 
just  cause  and  defence." 

It  was  not  until  after  the  defeat  at  Guxn- 
binnen  that  the  Germans  began  to  take  the 
danger  to  East  Prussia  seriously.  They  were 
aljsorbed  in  their  offensive  in  P'rance,  and  they 


had  left  only  five  corps  of  the  active  army  (the 
1st,  20th,  17th,  5th,  and  6th)  to  operate  on  the 
entire  Eastern  Front.  Of  these  the  (ith 
(Breslau)  was  sent  to  assist  the  Austrians  in 
Galicia,  and  only  two  (the  1st  and  20th)  were 
at  this  moment  available  in  East  Prussia. 
On  Saturday,  the  22nd,  the  General  Staff 
realized  that  serious  measvires  must  be  taken 
to  stop  the  Russian  advance,  and  a  telegram 
from  the  Kaiser  summoned  General  von 
Hindenburg  to  conduct  them.  He  was  waiting 
for  the  call,  and  on  Sunday,  the  23rd,  he 
reached  his  headquarters  at  Rlarienburg,  a 
fortress  town  near  the  mouth  of  the  VistvUa,  on 
the  extreme  edge  of  the  invaded  province.  He 
arrived  when  the  German  fortunes  were  at 
their  lowest  ebb,  and  the  story  of  how  within 
a  week  he  tvirned  the  tide  and  achieved  one 
of  the  few  really  decisive  victories  in  this  war 
makes  a  brilliant  page  even  in  the  rich  military 
history  of  Germany. 

Paul  von  Hindenburg  was,  when  the  war  broke 
out,  a  well-preserved  veteran  of  sixty-seven, 
living  in  retirement  at  Hanover.  He  came  of 
a  typical  Prussian  family,  and  for  two  centuries 
his  ancestors  had  served  the  State,  as  officers 
and  officials.  Their  estate  was  at  Neudeck 
in  West  Prussia,  on  the  edge  of  the  province 
which  he  was  called  upon  to  save,  a  place  rich 
in    memories    of    the    Napoleonic    wars — of    a 


COMMANDEERING. 


232 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GENERALS    VON    HINDENBURG    (left)   AND    VON    LUDENDORFF  (right). 


grandfather  who  had  dealt  face  to  face  with  the 
Emperor,  and  of  a  woiinded  French  soldier 
who  had  been  nursed  back  to  health  after  the 
retreat  from  Moscow.  The  General's  father 
was  a  regimental  officer  who  retired  with  the 
rank  of  major,  and  he  himself  was  born  in  the 
garrison  town  of  Posen.  The  traditions  of  the 
family  are  described  in  an  engaging  and  very 
simple-minded  biograjihy  by  the  General's 
younger  brother.  They  were  based  on  that 
curious  amalgam  of  piety,  loyalty,  and  mili. 
tarism  which  was  the  moral  foundation  of  the 
Prussian  "  Junker  "  class.  Paul  von  Hinden- 
burg  entered  the  Service  at  the  beginning  of 
Germany's  period  of  military  glory.  He  left 
the  military  college  to  serve  as  a  heutenant 
in  the  Austrian  campaign,  and  was  slightly 
Moimded   and   decorated   for   gallantry   at    his 


first  battle.  He  fought  in  the  French  war  at 
St.  Privat,  Sedan,  and  Paris.  Thereafter,  he 
served  on  the  staff  of  the  1st  Army  Corps  at 
Konigsberg.  Here  began  the  studies  which 
absorbed  his  mind  for  the  rest  of  his  military 
career.  He  was  fascinated  by  the  problem 
of  turning  the  mazes  of  the  Jlasiu-ian  lakes  and 
sv\amps  to  account  for  the  defence  of  East 
Prussia.  On  duty  and  on  holiday  he  tramped 
every  mile  of  the  country,  and  knew  to  a  nicetj' 
what  gravelly  shore  would  bear  the  weight  of 
a  field-gun,  and  which  swamp  would  engulf 
a  battery.  He  lectvu-ed  on  this  subject  at  the 
StafT  College  in  Berlin,  and  in  later  life  success- 
fully led  the  military  opposition  to  a  promising 
scheme  launched  by  an  agricultural  sjTidicate 
for  the  drainage  and  cultivation  of  these  in- 
valuable marshes.     His  military  career  was  one 


TEl^'    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


233 


of  regular  but  not  brilliant  advancement, 
and  he  retired  in  1911  from  the  conimand 
of  an  Army  Corps.  Of  genius  no  one  suspected 
him,  and  his  powerful,  square-cut  face  suggests 
rather  resolution  and  method  thaii  inspiration. 
How  far  his  brilliant  success  in  East  Prussia 
is  proof  of  a  military  talent  of  the  first  order, 
how  far  it  was  the  outcome  of  very  special 
study  and  minute  tojaographical  knowledge, 
it  is  not  easy  to  decide.  He  soon  became  the  idol 
of  Germany,  but  there  were  many  who  thought 
that  a  greater  soldier  than  Hindenburg  was  his 
brilliant  Chief  of  Staff,  General  von  Ludendorff. 
The  strategical  problem  that  confronted 
Hindenburg  was,  with  very  limited  forces, 
and  those  largely  composed  of  second-line 
inaterial,  to  beat  two  armies  which  had  nearly 
united,  each  of  them  equal  to  his  own  in  numbers 
and  possibly  a  little  more  than  equal.  Clearly 
he  must  take  them  in  detail,  before  they 
supported  each  other.  The  essence  of  success 
was  rapidity  of  movement  and  promptitude 
in  assembling  his  forces.  He  set  to  work  to 
gather  all  the  men  he  could  muster,  but  so 
siu-e  was  he  of  his  stroke,  that  he  did  not  wait 
to  secm-e  more  than  a  local  superiority  in 
niunbers  against  one-half  of  the  enemy's 
forces.  He  resolved  to  deal  first  of  all  with 
Samsonof5's  army,  and  then,  if  that  first  stroke 
should  prosper,  with  Rennenkampf.  His  chief 
strategical  asset  was  the  superb  railway  system 
of  Prussia.  It  worked  night  and  day  collecting 
an  army  for  him,  and  one  German  war-corre- 
spondent described  the  congestion  at  the  end, 
when  a  solid  and  miinterrupted  procession  of 
trains  filed  back  and  forward  on  the  main  line 
from  Thorn  to  Osterode.  The  available  re- 
sources in  men  were,  however,  very  limited. 
On  the  spot  was  the  beaten  20th  Corps  and  its 
Landwehr  supports.  The  next  step  was  to 
bring  down  von  Francois'  army  from  Konigs- 
berg — the  1st  Corps  and  its  Reserve  auxiliaries. 
Some  part  of  it  was  left  in  Konigsberg  to 
reinforce  the  garrison,  but  the  equivalent  of 
two  corps  undoubtedly  came  down  to  join 
in  Hindenburg' s  coup.  A  choice  of  railway 
routes  was  open  to  it  by  Elbing  and  Marien- 
burg.  The  sea  was  also  open  to  Danzig.  Tlie 
garrisons  of  Graudenz,  Thorn,  and  possibly  of 
Posen  were  laid  under  contribution.  They 
probably  consisted  mainly  of  Landwehr  troops, 
but  they  supplied  what  was  at  least  as  neces- 
sary as  men — heavy  guns.  The  Russian 
General  Staff,  according  to  the  military  critic 
of  the  Russkoe  Slovo,  reckoned  that  by  these 


means  Plindenburg  was  able  to  gather  nine 
divisions.  That  is  a  maximum  estimate.  Of 
these,  seven  divisions  had  already  been  heavily 
engaged,  and  must  have  been  mucli  weakened. 
Two  consisted  of  fresh  troops  from  the  for- 
tresses. Of  these  nine  divisions  (if  there  were 
so  many),  four  only  were  first-line  troops. 
Hindenburg  had,  in  short,  the  equivalent  of 
about  four  full  army  corps  (at  most  160:00C 
men).  Samsonoff  liad  five  corps  (over  200,000 
men)  under  his  command.  They  were  some- 
what scattered,  and  it  is  said  that  not  more 
than  three  and  a  half  corps  (seven  divisions) 
were  actvxally  engaged  in  the  disastrous  struggle 
among  the  lakes  which  came  to  be  known  as  t  he 
Battle  of  Tannenberg.  Where  precisely  the 
other  corps  and  a  half  was  posted  (if  it  was 
absent),  it  is  not  possible  to  say,  nor  why  it 
failed  to  come  up  to  take  part  in  the  battle. 
The  Germans  in  their  official  accounts  stated 
emphatically  that  they  had  been  dealing  with  a 
superior  force  of  five  corps.  The  Russian 
military  critics  were  no  less  insistent  that 
Hindenbiu-g  had  much  the  larger  force.  It  is 
not  possible  to  dogmatize  on  the  point,  though 
one  ixiay  note  that  even  if  Hindenburg  had 
this  not  very  large  numerical  superiority,  it  was 
nothing  more  than  a  local  and  temporary 
superiority,  achieved  at  one  point  by  his  energy, 
against  an  enemy  who  outnumbered  him  by 
two  to  one.  More  than  half  his  force,  more- 
over, was  composed  of  Landwehr  formations, 
while  the  whole  Rvissian  Army  was  drawn 
from  the  "  active  "  first  line.  A  theory  grew 
up  that  Hindenburg  drew  his  army  lai-gely 
from  the  Western  Front,  and  the  estimates  of 
the  number  of  corps  which  were  sent  to  him 
from  Belgium  rose  steadily  from  one  to  five  or 
even  seven.  These  corps  were  never  named  or 
identified.  The  theory  was  based  on  the  state- 
ments definitely  made  and  puhlishe-d  at  the 
time  that  on  Friday  night,  the  28th,  German 
troops  were  seen  entraining  in  Belgium  for  the 
East.  At  that  moment  Tannenberg  was 
virtually  won.  If  these  reinforcements  (what- 
ever their  extent)  were  destined  for  East 
Prussia,  ratlirr  than  Galioia  or  Poland,  thry 
nuist  have  arrived  at  a  later  stage,  wluii 
the  Germans  had  already  crossiMi  tiie  Ru.ssian 
frontier.  The  probabilities  aie  h.eavily  against 
this  th(>ory. 

Hindenburg  handled  his  tactical  pronlen\ 
as  skilfully  -  as  he  had  conceived  Ins  lun;id 
strategical  plan.  The  Knssians  had  iHi\;nieed 
with    \ery    little    forethiuiulit  •    t'nr    then-    ea.sy 


284 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


THE    MASURIAN    LAKE    COUNTRY. 
A  German  trench  with  barbed  wire  entanglements  in  front. 


successes  against  an  inferior  enemy  had  led 
them  to  suppose  that  they  had  nothing  worse 
to  fear  than  a  repetition  of  the  same  aimless 
opposition.  They  learned,  as  the  fight  went 
on,  that  they  were  dealing  with  larger  masses  of 
the  enemy  than  they  had  yet  encountered,  but 
they  realized  too  late  that  they  were  fighting 
against  a  well -conceived  idea.  They  had  some 
aviators,  and  an  abimdance  of  cavalry,  but 
their  intelligence  department  was  clearly  defec- 
tive. Samsonoff's  army  was  massed  within 
the  triangle  Soldau-AUenstein-Frankenau.  No 
attempt  had  been  made  to  occupy  the  good 
road  which  ran  from  Osterode  through  Gilgen- 
burg  to  Soldau,  still  less  the  two  railways  which 
fed  Soldau  from  Eylau,  Graudenz  and  Thorn. 
Von  Hindenburg's  first  step  was  to  occupy  this 
road  (much  of  it  concealed  by  forest)  and  to 
make  himself  master  of  Soldau  junction.  This 
line  was  gained  on  Wednesday,  the  26th,  only 
three  days  after  Hindenburg  had  assumed 
the  command.  It  was  a  line  easily  defended, 
for  there  were  marshes  before  it  and  a  good 
road  behind  it.  Above  all,  there  were  railways 
at  either  end  of  it  by  which  its  flanks  could  be 
reinforced.  Samsonoff  saw  that  the  loss  of 
Soldau  might  be  fatal  to  him,  for  it  cut  him  off 
from  liis  own  main  line  of  retreat  and  supply. 
He  tried  on  the  27th  to  concentrate  his  forces 
to   retake    Soldau,    but    the    tract    within    his 


triangle  was  ill-supplied  with  roads,  his  forces 
were  scattered,  and  he  could  not  convert  his 
total  superiority  in  numbers  into  a  superiority 
at  the  threatened  place.  He  dislocated  his 
forces  to  defend  his  left,  only  to  be  driven  back- 
wards  to  Neidenburg,  and  still  further  isolated. 

The  German  line  was  also  active  on  its  left. 
One  of  the  hottest  corners  of  the  great  battle 
was  at  Hohenstein.  In  this  pleasant  village 
of  3,000  inhabitants  the  Russians  were  in  con- 
siderable force,  struggling  to  break  Hinden- 
burg's line  by  forcing  a  way  to  the  north-west. 
Their  opponents  were  at  first  Landwehr  troops, 
and  the  fightmg  lasted  for  three  days  (20th  to 
28th).  It  was  decided  partly  by  the  arrival  of 
heavy  artillery,  which  battered  the  place  and 
its  outlying  defences  to  pieces,  partly  by  the 
coming  of  reinforcements  of  first-line  troops 
from  AUenstein.  which  the  Russians  had 
evacuated.  Two  days  after  the  battle  a  German 
war-correspondent  saw  the  streets  still  full  of 
dead  Russians  and  dead  horses.  The  village 
was  carried  eventually  by  a  bayonet  charge. 
Some  of  the  Russian  defenders  hid  in  its  cellars  ; 
many  surrendered  ;  the  remainder  were  driven 
back  upon  the  marshes  and  lakes  behind  it. 

On  the  27th  and  28th  Hindenburg  developed 
the  more  formidable  part  of  his  plan.  He 
had  already  taken  the  first  step  to  surroimd 
Samsonoff,  by  turning  him  with  his  right  wing 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


235 


at  Neidenburg.  He  now  gave  his  left  wing  an 
enormous  extension.  The  Russians  had  aban- 
doned Allenstein  more  easily  than  Soldau, 
failing  to  realize  that  it  was  the  key  to  their 
position.  The  Germans  thus  regained  the  us-e 
of  their  trunk  railway  as  far  as  Rothfliess,  and 
eventually  of  part  of  the  branch  line  which 
runs  down  to  Passenheim  and  Ortelsburg. 
They  did  not  rely  mainly  on  the  railway,  how- 
ever. They  had  also  the  good  main  road 
which  runs  beside  it,  and  they  used  petrol  to 
give  mobility  to  their  infantry.  From  all  the 
towns  within  reach  they  had  collected  every 
conceivable  species  of  motor-vehicle.  Omni- 
buses, taxicabs,  and  tradesmen's  lorries  were 
loaded  with  all  the  human  burden  they  could 
carry,  to  the  number  of  many  tens  of  thousands 
of  men,  with  a  due  complement  of  machine  guns. 
This  novel  motor-infantry  swept  round  the 
Russian  right  as  far  as  distant  Bischof sburg.  It 
took  Wartenburg  on  the  railway  and  then 
moved  down  the  road  to  Passenheim,  which 
was  captured  only  after  a  bloody  and  deter- 
mined struggle.  The  Germans  now  held  three 
good  roads  which  ran  round  three  sides  of  the 
Russian  position.     They  could  move  their  heavy 


guns  upon  them,  and  they  flung  their  shells  at 
will  iipon  the  Russian  masses,  congested  and 
bewildered  in  a  nearly  roadless  area  of  swamps 
and  woods.  It  seems  at  first  sight  increcUble 
that  anything  but  a  very  superior  armj''  could 
surround  another  so  effectually.  The  achieve- 
ment is,  however,  by  no  means  impossible  in 
these  conditions  even  for  a  nimierically  in- 
ferior force.  Hindenburg  was  able,  as  it  were, 
to  multiply  his  forces,  partly  by  his  foresight 
in  providing  motor  transport,  partly  by  his 
skill  in  mancEuvring  to  secure  the  roads.  His 
minute  knowledge  of  the  topography  of  the 
district  enabled  him,  moreover,  so  to  utilize  the 
swamps  and  lakes  that,  he  need  hold  only  the 
solid  intervals  between  them  ;  while  the  un- 
lucky Russians,  ignorant  of  the  country,  lost 
entire  batteries  in  the  marshes,  and  were 
drowned  as  often  as  they  were  shot.  By  the 
30th  whole  battalions  and  even  regiments  were 
laying  down  their  arms,  and  the  only  question 
was  how  many  could  escape  by  the  only  road 
open  to  them,  via  Ortelsbui'g  and  Johannisburg. 
On  the  31st,  in  a  last  effort  to  rally  his  men 
and  organize  the  retreat,  Samsonoff,  who  had 
borne  himself  amid  the  disaster  with  steadfast 


GERMAN    SOLDIERS    IN    TANNENBERG. 


2m 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


COSSACKS    ENTERING    LYCK.    EAST    PRUSSIA. 


gallantry,  rode  with  his  whole  Staff  into  a  fire- 
swept  zone.  "  My  place  is  with  my  men,"  was 
his  answer  to  remonstrances.  He  was. examin- 
ing a  map,  when  a  shell  burst  in  the  midst  of 
his  Staff.  It  killed  him  on  the  spot,  and  with 
him  General  Pestitch,  his  Chief  of  Staff,  and 
several  junior  officers.  His  personal  reputation 
suffered  nothing  in  this  defeat,  and  Russian 
opinion  inclined  rather  to  blame  his  colleague, 
General  Zhilinsky,  for  the  disaster.  A  Corps - 
commander.  General  Martos,  was  captured  in 
his  motor-car  as  he  sought  to  escape.  The 
Germans  made  in  all  about  90,000  unwounded 
prisoners  in  this  battle.  The  killed,  wounded 
and  drowned  must  have  numbered  another 
30,000  at  least.  One  corps  escaped  intact 
before  Ortelsburg  was  taken  and  the  way  of 
escape  finally  sealed,  and  with  it  about  half  of 
another.  Isolated  fragments  of  other  corps  or 
cavalry  divisions  are  said  to  have  broken 
away  south  to  the  Russian  frontier,  or  north 
to  join  Rermenkampf. 

Hindenburg  had  destroyed  one  of  the  two 
armies  with  which  he  had  to  deal.  He  had 
won  the  most  complete  victory  which  had 
so  far  fallen  to  any  commander  in  any  single 
battle  of  the  war.  His  prisoners  were  as 
numerous  as  those  taken  at  Sedan.      He  now 


turned  with  hardly  a  pause  for  rest  or  re- 
organization to  the  other  half  of  his  task.  He 
advanced,  as  rapidly  as  the  damaged  railways 
allowed,  against  the  Army  of  the  Niemen,  north- 
wards with  a  trend  to  the  east.  His  aim  was 
to  strike  up  past  Nordenburg,  Angerburg  and 
Goldap  to  Gumbinnen  or  Eydtkuhnen,  in  order 
to  intercept  Rennenkampf's  retreat.  Tlie 
manoeuvre  failed  in  the  sense  that  this  Russian 
army  was  not  cut  off.  It  succeeded  in  the  sense 
that  the  threat  to  its  left  and  rear  compelled  it 
to  fall  rapidly  back  on  its  bases  and  reserves 
on  the  Niemen.  The  fighting  nowhere  amounted 
to  more  than  a  rearguard  action,  but  it  cost  the 
Russians  the  loss  of  some  30,000  prisoners, 
captured  in  bodies  of  500  or  1,000  at  a  time  in 
isolated  positions.  It  hurried  their  retreat  so 
that  150  guns  and  great  quantities  of  warlike 
material  were  abandoned  on  the  roads. 
On  September  11  the  Russians  evacuated 
Insterburg,  and  in  a  general  order  dated  from 
that  town  on  the  15th,  General  von  Hindenburg 
was  able  to  armounce  that  Prussia  was  free 
from  the  last  of  the  invaders,  and  that  German 
troops  had  penetrated  Russia.  A  Reserve  army 
from  Grodno,  including  a  fresh  corps  from 
Finland  and  a  fine  Siberian  corps,  had  been 
defeated    with   some    difficulty    at   Lyck,    and 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


237 


again  in  a  small  affair  at  August  owo.  Suwalki, 
the  administrative  centre  of  the  Russian  frontier 
province,  was  occupied  by  the  Germans,  who 
set  up  a  permanent  administration,  and  allowed 
the  wives  of  officers  to  join  their  husbands. 
The  signs  of  over-confidence  may  be  read  also 
between  the  lines  of  General  von  Hindenburg's 
orders.  He  had  achieved  a  brilliant  success, 
which  his  under-estimation  of  the  enemy  was 
soon  to  neutralize.  The  obscure,  retired  soldier 
had  become  in  a  short  three  weeks  the  idol  of 
the  German  people,  and  the  Kaiser  confirmed 
the  popular  verdict  by  making  him  a  Field- 
Marshal  and  entrusting  him  with  the  supreme 
command  of  all  the  German  forces  in  the 
East. 

The  dashing  Russian  invasion  of  East  Prussia 
had  failed,  and  had  cost  ovu-  Ally  the  loss  of  an 
army.  It  is  easy  to  see,  after  the  event,  by 
what  altered  dispositions  the  mischance  might 
have  been  averted.  Samsonoff  paid  little  atten- 
tion to  the  enemy's  communications,  which  he 
neither  occupied  nor  destroyed,  and  Rennen- 
kampf  lost  time  in  making  contact  with  the 
Narew  Army.  The  larger  question  is  whether, 
in  spite  of  the  disaster,  this  great  enterprise  had 
a  salutary  effect  on  the  Allied  position  as  a 
whole.  It  is  probably  a  mistake  to  suppose 
that  it  caused  any  direct  and  immediate  trans- 
ference of  troops  from  France  to  East  Prussia. 
But  without  a  doubt  it  did  indirectly  contribute 
to  relieve  the  pressure  on  the  Western  front. 
It  demonstrated  the  power  of  the  Russians  to 
assume  an  early  offensive,  and  forced  the 
Germans  to  provide  against  its  renewal.  It 
led  the  Germans  to  regard  the  whole  Eastern 
front  with  a  new  anxiety  and  a  new  interest. 
It  was  the  starting-point  in  adventm-e  after 
adventure,  in  which  they  hiirled  their  forces 
on  Warsaw,  wasting  their  resources  in  the 
process.  It  was  a  shrewd  blow  from  the  left 
against  a  boxer  whose  whole  attention  had  been 
directed  to  his  right.  It  forced  him  at  length 
to  direct  his  energies  to  both  fronts,  and  to  meet 
the  offensive  by  a  counter-offensive.  It  was  at 
once  a  challenge  and  a  temptation. 


The  sequel  of  Hindenburg's  East  Prussian 
campaign  was  destined  to  tarnish  its  glory, 
and  restore  the  presti^  of  the  Russian  armies. 
They  showed,  as  they  often  did  in  this  war, 
their>  steadiness  and  imperturbabiUty  imder 
reverses,  their  ability  without  a  sign  of  any 
loss  of  nerve  or  confidence  to  resume  the 
offensive  after  a  costly  retreat,  their  skill   in 


taking  advantage  of  the  natural  difficulties  of 
their   country   to   repel   an   invader.     Suwalki 
was  occupied  by  the  Germans  on  September  1 5, 
and     von     Hindenburg,     ^^•ho     believed     that 
Rennenkampf's  big  army  had  been  "  not  merely 
defeated,  but  shattered,"  left  the  actual  conduct 
of  operations  to  General  von  Morgen,  who  had 
served  under  hun  at  Tannenberg.     The  order 
was   given   for   a   resolute   pursuit,   but   it    is 
probable  that  the  Germans  aimed  at  something 
more  than  this.     If  they  could  force  a  crossing 
of  the  Niemen,  they  might  hope  to  cut  the  Petro- 
grad-Vilna-^^^arsaw  railway,  and  even  eventu- 
ally  to   work   southwards,   so   as   to   threaten 
the  great  fortified  camp  of  Brest-Litovsk.     But 
if  that  supremely  imprudent  idea  was  enter- 
tained, it  was  soon  abandoned.     The  Germans 
had  no  forces  to  spare  for  such  an  operation. 
Tliey  had  during  the  brief  Campaign  of  the 
Niemen  at  most  four  army  corps  at  their  dis- 
posal, as  the  French  General  Staff  stated  in  an 
official    communique,    and    these    were    largely 
Landwehr    and    mixed    formations.     Rennen- 
kampf  had  saved  his  army  intact,  and  got  it 
safely  across  the  Niemen  by  the  23rd.     Here 
he  could  refit,  and  fill  up  the  gaps  in  its  ranks 
from  his  depots.     To  it  we  must  add  the  corps 
and  a  half  which  escaped  from  Tannenberg,  a 
corps   from   Finland,    and   a   famous   Siberian 
Corps,  both  composed  of  fresh  troops,  together 
with    heavy    artillery    from    the    fortresses    of 
Kovno  and  Grodno,  cavalry,  and  an  unknown 
number  of  reserve  formations.     It  was  a  for- 
midable force,  acting  in  its  own  difficult  coiuitry, 
and  it  must  have  had  a  superiority  of  quite  two 
to  one.     It  had,  moreover,  gained  in  leadership, 
for  General  Ruszky,  the  victor  of  Lemberg,  a 
brilliant  scientific  soldier,  had  been  detached  to 
conunand  the  defence.     The  Germans  no  longer 
had  their  admirable  systera  of  strategical  rail- 
ways at  their  disposal.     They  did  indeed  adapt 
their  own  rolling   stock  to   the   gauge  of   the 
Russian  system,  but  of  Russian  lines  there  were 
hardly  any  in  this  region.     Their  troops  were 
fatigued  with  hard  marching,  and  when  once 
the  frontier  was  crossed,  they  discovered  that 
only   a   few    of    the    better   main    roads    were 
practicable   for   their   heavy   motor   transport. 
Most   of   the   roads   were   nothing   but   beaten 
tracks,  which  had  never  been  macadamized,  and 
became  in  a  wet  autumn  impassable  sloughs  of 
heavy  mud.     The  good  causeways,  as  it  ha})- 
pened,  were  often  narrow  defiles  between  lakes 
and  swamps,  where  no  army  could  deploy.     To 
add  to  the  misfortunes  of  the  invaders,  it  rained 


238 


THE    TIMES    H7ST0BY    OF    THE    WAR. 


LIEUTENANT-GENERAL    VON    MORGEN. 

heavily  for  three  days,  from  September  27-30, 
the  critical  period  of  the  fighting. 

The  Russian  defences  were  formed  primarily 
by  two  rivers,  the  Niemen  and  the  Bobr.  The 
latter  is  an  inconsiderable  stream,  of  no  great 
width,  but  it  is  12  feet  deep,  and  it  runs 
through  a  swampy  valley  of  immense  and 
impassable  mai'shes.  Across  these  marshes 
there  is  only  one  good  passage,  the  high-road 
and  railway  from  Lyck  through  Grajewo  to 
Bialystok.  The  crossing  is  defended  by  the 
little  town  of  Osowiec,  which  ranks  as  a  third- 
class  fortress.  It  has  solid  concrete  forts,  and 
these  were  provided,  after  the  outbreak  of  war, 
with  a  new  type  of  heavy  gun,  whose  perform- 
ances surprised  the  Gennans.  They  guessed 
that  naval  guns  had  been  brought  up  from  the 
fleet,  but  the  weapon  was  in  fact  a  new  siege 
gim,  recently  made  at  the  Putiloff  works.  The 
Germans  made  an  effort  to  take  Osowiec,  but 
it  proved  itself  a  more  formidable  obstacle  than 
Liege.  A  place  with  impassable  marshes  before 
it  cannot  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word  be 
V>esieged,  and  an  assault  along  a  single  causeway 
\\  ould  be  an  almost  impossibly  costly  operation. 
The  defenders  further  improved  a  naturally 
strong  position  by  opening  the  sluices  of  the 
Bobr.     The  attack  on  this  gaJlant  little  fortress 


earned  a  singular  distinction  from  the  fact  that, 
while  it  was  in  progress,  first  the  Kaiser  and  then 
the  Tsar  visited  the  opposing  camps.  The 
bombardment  began  on  September  27,  and 
lasted  for  four  days  and  nights  without  a 
respite.  It  destroyed  some  outlying  villages, 
but  did  singularly  little  damage  to  the  solid 
and  well-built  forts.  The  17-in.  howitzers 
made  their  appearance  as  usual  in  the 
newspaper  accounts  of  these  operations,  but  the 
probability  is  that  the  largest  guns  used  were 
the  more  generally  serviceable  Austrian  pieces, 
on  motor  carriages.  The  guns  were  pushed  up 
to  within  five  miles  of  the  fortress,  and  the 
infantry  lines  were  never  nearer  than  four 
miles.  The  last  episode  of  the  siege  was  a 
brilliant  sortie  by  the  garrison.  Bodies  of 
infantry,  by  following  paths  over  the  swamps 
known  only  to  the  inhabitants,  contrived  to  get 
behind  the  advanced  German  lines,  both  from 
left  and  right.  Another  body  charged  up  the 
causew  ay,  and  before  the  Germans  had  recovered 
from  their  surprise,  contriv-ed  to  capture  three  of 
the  guns,  while  the  rest  went  hurriedly  north- 
wards. It  was  the  last  event  of  the  siege,  and 
a  Russian  communique  announced  its  end  on 
October  1.  It  was  abandoned  not  merely 
because  Osowiec  had  proved  to  be  unexpectedly 
obstinate,  but  also  because  the  larger  German 
operations  against  the  Niemen  had  meanwhile 
failed  even  more  hopelessly.  A  fortnight  later 
the  Russians  were  themselves  pursuing  a  pros- 
perous offensive  over  the  road  by  which  the 
Germans  advanced,  and  were  on  German  soil 
engaged  in  an  attack  on  Lyck. 

By  September  23,  when  Rennenkampf's 
rearguard  crossed  the  Niemen,  the  Germans 
occupied  all  the  chief  strategic  points 
in  the  country  between  that  river  and  their 
own  frontier.  The  struggle  which  went  on 
during  the  next  week  is  generally  known  as  the 
Battle  of  Augustowo.  The  idea  of  the  Germans 
was  to  cross  the  Niemen,  and  presumably  to 
cut  the  railway  at  or  about  Grodno.  The  idea 
of  General  Ruszky  was  not  merely  to  repel  them 
from  the  Niemen,  but  to  drive  them  back  to 
their  own  frontier,  and  to  disorganize  their 
communications  by  seizing  the  little  town  of 
x\ugustowo — a  place  of  no  intrinsic  importance, 
but  vital  because  it  is  the  point  at  which  several 
of  the  few  good  roads  of  this  region  cross.  A 
curious  circular  strategic  railway  runs  from 
Grodno  to  Augustowo,  and  thence  through 
Suwalki  back  to  the  Niemen  at  Olita.  Neither 
side  could  use  it,  for  both  had  damaged  it,  and 


1 


THE    TIMES  -HISTORY-    OF    THE    WAR. 


239 


the  Germans  had  no  rolling  stock.  The  chief 
physical  feature  of  this  region  is  the  im- 
mense forest,  30  miles  long  and  20  wide,  on 
whose  western  edge  Augustowo  is  situated. 
Intricate  chains  of  lakes  stretch  on  either  side 
of  the  road  from  Suwalki  to  Seiny,  begin  again 
south-east  of  Seiny,  and  are  found  on  either  side 
of  the  road  from  Surino  to  the  Niemen.  It  is 
not  a  country  for  rash  adventures,  and  the 
Germans  were  to  learn  in  it  the  lesson  which 
the  Russians  learned  amid  the  Masurian  lakes. 
Above  all,  the  Niemen  is  itself  a  formidable 
obstacle.  It  is  more  than  200  yards  wide  ;  it 
is  too  deep  to  ford,  and  bridges  exist  only  at 
Grodno  and  Olita,  both  of  them  fortified  places. 
The  defence  had  a  further  advantage.  The 
right  bank,  which  the  Russians  held,  was  high, 
and  in  some  places  might  alinost  be  called  a 
cliff.  The  left  bank,  on  which  the  Germans 
had  to  operate,  was  low,  and,  what  was  worse, 
it  was  in  most  places  swampy. 

The  attempt  to  cross  the  Niemen  was  made 
simultaneously  at  two  points.  The  more 
northernly  of  these  was  Druskeniki,  about  27 
miles  north  of  Grodno.  Here  on  the  morning 
of  September  25  the  Germans  constructed  a 
pontoon  bridge.  The  Russians  on  the  steep 
right  bank  reserved  their  fire  until  a  dense 
column  of  men  was  already  on  the  bridge. 
Then  from  cleverly  screened  positions  the 
Russian  field  guns  and  machine  guns  fell  to 
work.  The  bridge  was  swept  clean.  The 
German  guns  were  then  brought  into  action 
and  a  long  artillery  duel  followed.  Thinking 
that  their  artillery  had  at  last  silenced  the 
enemy's  fire,  the  German  infantry  again 
crowded  over  the  bridge.  They  met  the  same 
fate  as  their  predecessors,  and  it  is  said  that 
thousands  of  German  corpses- floated  down  the 
river.  A  third  attempt  was  made,  after  a 
further  artillery  duel,  towards  sunset,  and  with 
more  determination  and  still  heavier  slaughter. 
The  Cossacks  crossed  at  nightfall  by  the 
German  bridge,  and  pursued  the  Germans  over 
a  distance  of  tnght  miles.  Two  divisions  were 
engaged  in  this  attempt,  and  they  are  thought 
to  hLve  lost  fully  half  their  effectives. 

The  other  attempt  was  made  nearer  to 
Grodno,  not  far  from  the  village  of  Sopotskinie, 
where  the  Dul)issa  enters  the  Niemen.  Here 
the  Russian  heavy  guns  were  posted  on  the 
cliffs  of  the  right  bank.  The  field  guns  were  on 
the  sandy  shore  beloN\-  them.  Across  the  river 
on  the  left  bank  was  entrenched  the  Russian 
infantry,  doomed  to  destruction  if  its  defence 


should  fail,  and  resolved  at  any  cost  to  deny  the 
Germans  access  to  the  river.  The  artillery 
began  to  fire  on  the  afternoon  of  the  25th,  and 
all  through  the  night  the  Germans  repeated 
their  incessant  efforts  to  take  the  Russian 
trenches.  Twice  the  soimd  of  a  Russian  cheer 
mingled  with  the  thimder  of  the  guns,  as  the 
defenders  delivered  coimter-attacks  against  the 
Germans.  The  enemy  retreated  at  dawn,  and 
the  Russians  as  they  pursued  counted  his  dead 
by  thousands.     * 

The  rest  of  the  operations  which  made  up 
the  "  Battle  of  Augustowo  "  were  little  more 
than  'a  retreat  by  the  Germans  along  the  few 
practicable  roads,  harassed  by  the  fire  of  the 
Russian  big  guns,  and  pursued  as  occasion 
offered  by  the  Russian  cavahy.  There  was 
some  hand-to-hand  fighting  in  the  forest,  in 
which  the  Russians  showed  their  usual 
superiority  with  the  bayonet  and  the  grenade 
at  close  quarters.  The  decisive  action  was 
fought  in  the  clear  spaces  round  Augustowo. 
The  Germans  had  disposed  themselves  with 
considerable  skill  on  three  sides  of  a  square,  so 
that  they  commanded  the  exit  from  the  forest 
with  cross  fire.  The  Russians  crossed  the  canal, 
executed  a  wide  turning  movement  by  the 
south,  and  eventually  bombarded  Augustowo 
from  the  west  and  north-west  with  heavy  guns. 
The  town  was  taken  by  the  Russians  on  the 
afternoon  of  October  1,  and  the  infantry  pressed 
on  by  the  roads  to  Raczky  and  Suwalki,  clearing 
the  obstacles  of  barbed  wire  and  felled  trees  as 
they  went.     The  possession  of  the  roads  that 


GENERAL  N.   N.  MARTOS. 


240 


THE'  TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAB. 


converge  on  Augiistowo  settled  the  "  battle," 
if    one   can   use   that    word    to   describe   these 
contests.    Deprived  of  these  roads,  the  Germans 
could  no  longer  keep  touch  with  their  forces 
before  O^owiec,  and  these  at  once  retired.     Nor 
could  they  any  longer  supply  themselves  from 
the  strategic  railway  Lyck-Marggrabowa,  which 
runs     parallel     to     their     frontier     within     it. 
Defeated    at    Augiistowo    and    Suwalki,    their 
scattered      forces      farther      north,      towards 
Mariampol,     were    compelled    on    October     3 
and  4   to   fall  back  towards  the  frontier,  with 
the  Russians  pressing  hard  behind  them.     The 
stroke  at  Augustowo  was  well  planned,  and  the 
whole  series  of  operations  was  managed  with  a 
skill  worthy  of  the  reputation  which  General 
Ruszky  had  won  in  Galicia.     A  week  of  hard 
fighting  and  hard  marching  sufficed  to  hurl  the 
invaders  back  to  their  own  country,  their  glory 
not    a    little    diminished    and    their    mxmbers 
reduced  by  a  heavy  tale  of  casualties.     Some 
of  the  credit  belongs  to  General  Ruszky,  some 
of  it  to  the  swamps  and  forests  of  Lithuania, 
but  the  real  hero  of  this  battle  was  the  Russian 
infantryman.     First  in  renown  was  the  famous 
3rd  Siberian  Corps.     Its  men  towered  in  height 
above  the  European  average.      They  had  de- 
veloped in  their  winters  an  endurance  which 
laughed  at  fatigue  and  exposure.     Impertvu-b- 
able  under  fire,  they  displayed  an  irresistible 
impetus  in  the  charge.    Their  crowning  exploit 
at  Augustowo  was  a  march  of  30  miles,  with  a 
bayonet  charge  at  the  end  of  it. 

A  pause  of  comparative  inaction  at  this  point 
followed  Tannenberg  and  Augustowo.  Through- 
out October  and  the  early  days  of  November 
the  Russians  and  the  Germans  faced  each  other 
in  entrenched  positions,  which  followed  approxi- 
mately the  line  of  the  frontier.  The  Germans 
dug  themselves  in  elaborately,  with  all  the 
paraphernalia  of  wire  entanglements,  concealed 
giui-pits  and  deep  trenches.  They  attacked  the 
slighter  Russian  trenches  every  night  by  a  sort 
of  habitual  routine,  with  the  aid  of  their  search- 


lights, but  they  evidently  had  no  thought  of 
advancing.     The  real  fighting  on  the  Eastern 
Front  was  now  in  Poland,  and  it  is  probable  that 
von  Hindenburg  had    transferred  thither  most 
of  the  first-line  troops  in  East  Prussia.     Towards 
the  middle  of  November  the  German  defence 
weakened.     The  Russians  were  again  attacking 
at  Lyck,  while  on  their  old  road  in  the  north 
they  had  reached  Stall upone.i  (November  14). 
Early  in  December  they  were  slowly  penetrating 
the    maze    of    the    Masurian    lakes,    and    the 
Siberians  were  performing  prodigies  of  courage 
against  the  elaborate  obstacles  with  which  their 
defiles  were  now  defended.     It  was  a  war  of 
trenches,  and   by   sapping    slow   progress   was 
made  against  the  nearly  impregnable  German 
positions.     They  were  weakly   held  by  recent 
formations,     and     when     the     Russians     took 
prisoners  they  were  often  mere  lads  of  seventeen. 
Neither  side  could  spare  large  forces   on  this 
front,  and  it  was  a  desultory  advance  which 
wore  down  the  resistance  of  a  limited  garrison. 
The  Germans  had  forbidden  their  fugitives  to 
return  to  the  frontier  regions  of  East  Prussia, 
and  so  long  as  the  Russians  did  not  advance 
beyond    GumbLnnen,    Angerburg,    Lotzen    and 
Johannisburg  the   Germans  seemed  to  regard 
their  presence  with  equanimity.     The  Russians 
held  this  area  with  some  vicissitudes  through- 
out December,  and  no  serious  effort  was  made 
to  dislodge  them.     The  fortunes  of  war  in  this 
region  were  now  fairly  balanced.     Von  Hinden- 
burg had  indeed  destroyed  a  Russian  army  in 
a  battle  which  was  perhaps  the  most  decisive 
victory,  as  it  was  intellectually  the  most  brilliant 
performance,  of  the  whole  war.     His  error  of 
judgment  in  attacldng  the  lines  of  the  Nieraen 
went  far  to  neutralize  that  fine  exploit.     The 
soldiers'   battle   of  Augustowo  had  wiped  out 
the  memory  of  defeat,  and  at  the  end  of  the 
year   the   Russians   in   this   region   could   con- 
gratulate   themselves    that    they    had    cleared 
their  own  soil  and  once  more  carried  the  war 
into  the  enemy's  country. 


CHAPTER    LVII 


THE  RUSSIAN  CONQUEST  OF 

GALICIA. 


Austro-German  Misunderstanding  of  Russia — Plan  of  the  Campaign — Crossing  the 
Frontier — Advance  of  Austrian  Armies — Russian  Counter-Movements — Battle  of  the 
Gnita  Lipa — Halicz — The  Battle  of  Lemberg — Austrian  Reinforcements — Russian 
Offensive  in  the  North — Retirement  of  Austrian  First  Army — The  Battle  of  the  Grodek 
Line — Rawa-Ruska — The  Crossing  of  the  San — Jaroslau — Siege  and  Fall  of  Przemysl 
— End  of  the  Campaign — Behaviour  of  Russian  Troops. 


WHEN  the  Austrians  began  their 
operations  against  Russia  on  the 
Galician  frontier  they  made  cer- 
tain vital  miscalculations.  They 
grossly  underestimated  the  quality  of  the  enemy 
with  whom  they  went  to  cross  swords.  They 
counted  confidently  on  having  the  sjTnpathy 
of  the  Polish  people  against  their  Russian 
"  oppressors  "  ;  and  they  were  quite  unpre- 
pared for  the  rapidity  with  which  Russia 
succeeded  in  massing  her  armies  against  them. 

That  Germany  and  Austria  should  have 
failed  to  luiderstand  at  its  true  worth  the 
wonderful  regeneration  of  the  Russian  Army 
which  had  taken  place  since  the  Japanese  War 
is  curious  ;  for,  though  events,  especially  recent 
events  in  the  Balkans,  had  subjected  to  con- 
siderable strain  that  "  wire  to  St.  Petersburg," 
on  the  intricate  working  of  which  Prince 
Bismarck  set  so  much  store,  the  German 
General  Staff  had  every  opportimity  of  being 
thoroughly  informed  on  Russian  military 
affairs.  Their  failure  to  anticipate  the  enthu- 
siastic loyalty  to  the  Tsar  with  which  all  the 
peoples  of  the  Russian  Empire  threw  them- 
selves into  the  war  was  only  symptomatic  of 
Vol.  III.— Part  33  241 


the  incapacity  which  the  Germans  had  shown 
to  grasp  the  psychology  of  any  people  but 
themselves.  They  looked  for  a  revolt  of  the 
Poles  against  Tsardom  precisely  as  they  counted 
upon  revolution  in  Ireland  and  the  blazing  up 
of  sedition  in  India  and  in  Egypt.  In  the  case 
of  Poland  the  stupidity  was,  perhaps,  a  trifle 
aggravated,  because,  whatever  justification  the 
Poles'  may  have  had  for  grievance  against 
Russia,  Germany,  as  Sir  \'alentine  Chirol  has 
remarked,  "  had  oppressed  her  own  Poles  not 
less  ruthlessly  than  Russia,  but  a  great  deal 
more  scientifically."* 

In  the  third  of  the  prime  miscalculations 
mentioned  above — namely,  as  to  the  length  of 
time  which  Russia  would  take  before  she  could 
oppose  any  effective  opposition  to  their  plans— 
the  Avistrians  had  the  excuse  of  the  visible 
inferiority  for  strategic  purposes  of  the  Russian 
railway  system  as  compared  with  their  own. 
On  the  Austrian  side  of  the  international 
boiuidary  two  main  lines  of  railway  ran 
practically  parallel  to  the  frontier  at  no  great 
distance    away,    well     built,    with    abundant 

•  "  Germany  and  the  '  I'car  of  Russia,'  "  >l)y  Si» 
Valentine  Cliirol  (Oxford  Pamphlets,  No.  14). 


24-2 


THE     TUIKS    HISTORY    OF     THF    WAR. 


ARCHDUKE  CHARLES   FRANCIS  JOSEPH 
The  Austrian  Heir-Apparent. 

coruiecting  lilies  to  the  interior  of  the  Empire, 
and  with  spurs  running  to  the  frontier  itself  at 
half  a  dozen  points.  On  the  Russian  side  the 
main  line  from  Warsaw  to  Kieff  via  Lublin  is 
on  an  average  between  50  and  60  miles  from 
the  frontier,  and  only  at  three  points  do  branch 
lines  project  into  that  intermediate  space 
between  Poland  and  the  Bukowina.  A  spur 
from  Kovel  runs  to  ^^itliin  20  miles  of  the 
frontier  at  Vladimir- Volynsk  ;  and  further  east 
a  line  from  near  Rovno  runs  to  Lemberg, 
passing  the  frontier  at  Brody,  throwing  off  on 
its  way  a  small  branch  to  the  southward  as  far  as 
&emenez,  wliile  the  main  international  Kieff - 
Lemberg  line  crosses  the  frontier  near  Tarnopol, 
Operating  under  Uke  disadvantages,  there  is  no 
knowing  how  long  the  Austrians  would  have 
taken  to  push  any  considerable  armies  into  the 
enemy's  country.  But  the  rapidity  with  wliich 
the  Russians,  moving  independently  of  rail- 
ivays,  covered  long  distances  with  great  masses 
of  troops  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
features  of  the  war.  The  efficiency  of  their 
seemingly  irregular  road  transport  was  the 
admiration  of  observers.  The  Russian  peasant 
soldier,  too,  was  inured  to  hardsliip  and  scanty 
fare.  It  seems,  however  incredible,  to  be  a 
well-established  fact  that  a  large  part  of  the 


UiLs.siaii  .-Viiiiies,  ttiat  of  General  Riizsky, 
in  the  campaign  which  we  are  now  discu-sKing, 
liaving  outdistanced  its  coixmiissariat,  lived 
lor  some  six  days  of  hard  marching  and  stern 
fighting  entirely  on  apples  which  it  stripped 
from  the  orchards  as  it  passed.  At  the  end  of 
the  six  days  it  executed  one  of  the  most 
arduous  and  most  brilhant  strokes  of  the  war. 
Such  performances  had  been  left  quite  out  of 
the  reckoning  of  the  Austrian  General  Staff. 

The  Austrians  thus  miscalculated  the  spirit 
and  capacity  of  the  enemy  opposed  to  them  ; 
and  it  is  doubtful  if  the  plan  of  invading 
Russia  at  the  beginning  of  hostilities  originated 
with  or  had  the  full  sj-nipathy  of  the  Austrian 
General  Staff.  There  is  some  evidence  that 
they  would  have  preferred  to  wait  witliin 
their  o^^■n  territory  and  meet  whatever  troops 
the  Russians  sent  agauist  them  on  ground  of 
tlieir  own  choosing.  The  plan  adopted  seems 
to  have  been  forced  on  her  allj-  by  Germany. 

The  invasion  was  not  intended  as  a  blow  at 
the  heart  of  Russia.  The  operation  was  of  an 
offensive -defensive  character,  havmg  for  its 
chief  object  the  detaining  on  this  front  of  as 
large  a  Russian  force  as  possible,  so  as  to 
prevent  it  from  cooperating  in  the  resistance 
to  the  German  adv-ance  in  the  north.  The 
cliief  offensive  was  entrusted  to  the  1st  Austrian 
Army  under  General  Dankl,  consisting  of  some 
seven  army  corps  with  various  additional  units, 
or  between  300,000  and  400,000  men.  From 
its  base  on  Przemysl  and  Jaroslau  its  business 
was  to  push  upwards  between  the  Vistula,  on 
the  left  hand,  and  the  Bug,  on  the  right,  to 
Lublin  and  lOiolm.  Here  it  would  cut  and 
hold  the  Warsaw-Kieff  railway  ;  and  the  road 
would  lie  open  beyond  towards  Brest-Litovsk 
and  the  main  coimiiunications  in  the  rear  of 
Warsaw. 

A\'hile  the  1st  Army  tlirust  forward  to  this 
position  it  would  be  protected  from  attack  on 
its  right  and  rear  from  the  east  and  south  by 
the  2nd  Army  under  General  von  Auffenberg, 
\^hich,  advancing  north-east  from  Lemberg, 
would  dominate  Eastern  Galicia  from  the  Bug 
to  the  Sereth  and  the  Dniester.  The  constitu- 
tion of  von  Auffenberg's  Army  at  the  opening 
of  the  campaign  is  uncertain.  It  was  stated 
to  contain  no  more  than  five  army  corps  with 
five  divisions  of  cavalry.  Probablj^  it  then 
amounted  to  about  300,000  men.  Whatever 
may  have  been  its  strength  at  first,  however, 
circumstances  soon  compelled  a  very  large 
increase  in  its  numbers,  and  in  the  course  of 


THE     TIME;^    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


•243 


the  fighting,  as  it  developed,  von  Auffenberg 
seems  to  have  had  under  his  command  at  least 
six  full  army  corps  (the  3rd,  7th,  11th,  12th, 
13th,  and  14th),  besides  the  five  divisions  of 
cavalry  and  some  last  reserves  ;  and  he  was 
reported  to  have  no  fewer  than  ten. 

This  increase  was  drawn  in  the  first  instance 
from  the  3rd  or  Reserve  Army,  in  command  of 
the  Archduke  Joseph  Ferdinand.  This  army, 
as  an  independent  \.mit,  took  an  inconspicuous 
part  in  the  operations.  While  General  Dankl 
was  advancing  on  Lublin,  with  von  Aioffenberg 
protecting  his  right  flank,  the  Archduke's 
Army  seems  to  have  been  similarly  pushed  out 
on  the  left.  Crossing  the  Polish  border,  it 
moved,  without  meeting  serious  resistance,  as 
far  as  Ivielce  and  towards  Radom.  That  was 
as  far  as  it  was  destined  or,  perhaps,  intended, 
to  go. 

In  these  three  armies  Austria  had  immedi- 
ately available  about,  or  nearly,  one  million 
men  ;  and  it  will  be  worth  while  to  stop  a 
moment  to  consider  the  position  which  would 
have  resulted  from  the  successful  establishment 
of  these  three  armies  in  their  respective 
spheres. 

When  gathering  their  forces  for  the  cam- 
paign on  the  northern  front,  the  Germans  had 
left  troops  at  both  Posen  and  Breslau,  not  less 
than  one  army  corps  at  the  former  place.,  and 
apparently   two,   with   some    additional    units. 


at  the  latter.  If  their  offensive  on  that  front 
had  been  successful  and  they  had  reduced  or 
penetrated  beyond  Warsaw,  Poland  would 
have  been  at  their  mercy.  While  General 
Dankl  from  the  direction  of  Lublin  was  joining 
hands  with  the  main  German  Armies  in  tlie 
rear  of  Warsaw,  the  Austrian  Ai-niy  of  the 
Archdulce,  advancing  from  Kielce,  woiild  have 
had  the  assistance  of  the  Posen -Breslau  corps 
in  taking  care  of  any  Russian  force  which 
remained  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Vistula.  Any 
Russian  troops  thus  surrovuided  in  Poland  must 
either  have  surrendered  or  been  annihilated. 
With  powerful  armies  on  three  sides  of  it, 
Iwangorod  could  not  have  resisted  long,  and 
Poland  would  have  been  a  second  Belgium. 
By  that  time,  also,  it  was  hoped  that  the 
"  smashing "  of  France  would  be  completed 
and  the  two  allies,  with  an  unbroken  front 
on  a  straight  line  from  the  Baltic  to  the  Car- 
pathians, could  have  given  their  undivided 
attention  to  proceeding  against  Russia,  with 
no  fear  of  a  flank  attack.  This  they  could  not 
do,  either  from  the  north  or  south,  so  long  as 
Warsaw, Iwangorod  and  Brest-Litovsk  remained 
as  a  base  from  which  the  Russians  could  strike 
in  either  direction.  This  we  know  to  have  been 
the  views  of  the  German  General  Staff.  The 
Austrian  advance,  thenj  was  part  of,  or  auxili- 
ary to,  the  German  movement  in  the  north. 
"Ilie  outbreak  of  ^^a^  had  been  received  in 


RUSSIAN    ADVANCE    GUARD    IN    KIELCE. 


244 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


RUSSIAN    GUNS    IN    THE    TRENCHES. 


Vienna  with  great  enthusiasm.  Those  who 
had  any  forebodings  when  it  was  kno\\n  that 
the  enemy  was  to  be  sometliing  so  much  more 
formidable  than  "  Httle  Serbia  "  were  laughed 
at.  Russia  was  huge  but  without  coherence. 
It  was  preposterous  to  suppose  that  the  nation 
wliich  had  failed  against  Japan  would  be  able 
to  withstand  Germany  and  Austria  combined. 
She  was  unready  and  woiild  be  beaten  before 
her  great  shadowy  forces  could  be  brought  into 
the  field. 

All  analogy  to  the  Japanese  Wai',  hou^ever, 
was  made  fallacious,  not  only  by  the  regenera- 
tion of  the  Russian  Army,  which  has  already 
been  fully  described,  but,  still  more,  by  the 
different  spirit  in  which  the  new  war  was 
accepted  by  the  Russian  jjeoples.  After  the 
fighting  on  the  Galician  frontier  had  been  in 
progress  for  two  weeks  a  Berlin  newspaper 
quoted  Austrian  officers  as  saying  that  "  Rus- 
sian troops  are  simply  growing  out  of  the  earth, 
without  interruption."  It  was  true.  In  a 
nobler  and  more  beautiful  sense  than  either 
the  Austrian  officers  or  the  German  jom-nalist 
dreamed,  the  troops  did  in  very  truth  gro\v  out 
of  the  earth.  Whatever  differences  of  race  or 
creed  or  politics  may  have  separated  various 


sections  of  the  Russian  people,  they  were  united 
in  one  passionate  sentiment  of  devotion  to 
Russia — the  great  spiritual  entity,  beyond  and 
above  all  creeds  and  governments,  of  which 
the  material  symbol  was  the  Russian  soil.  All 
Russians  loved  the  soil  of  Russia.  It  was  the 
violation  of  that  soil  by  the  tread  of  the  invader 
— the  thought  of  its  subjection  to  a  brutal 
enemy — which  enraged  the  people  and  aroused 
them  to  a  unitj'^  of  religious  fervour  as  in  a  holy 
cause.  It  was  the  soil  which  bade  them  go  to 
war.     They  "  gi-ew  out  of  the  earth." 

In  a  series  of  striking  letters*  to  The  Times 
Mr.  Stephen  Graham  described  the  extra- 
ordinary spectacle  of  the  stirring  of  the  Rus- 
sian peoples  as  he  witnessed  it  in  Cossack 
Adllages  on  the  Mongolian  frontier  when  the 
great  news  came  and  "  a  young  man  on  a  fine 
horse  came  galloping  down  the  village  street, 
a  great  red  flag  hanging  from  his  shoulders  and 
flapping  in  the  wind  ;  and  as  he  went  he  called 
out  the  news  to  each  and  every  one — War  ! 
War  !  "  From  another  angle  another  special 
correspondent     of     The     Times,     Mr.     Stanley 


•  Subsequently  published  in  a  volume  under  the  title 
of  "  Russia  and  the  World  "  (Cassoll). 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


245 


•Wafihbiirn',  was  at  the  same  moment  describing 
what  went  on  in  Ht.  Petersburg  (as  the  town  still 
was)  and  comparing  it  with  what  occurred  at 
the  opening  of  the  war  with  Japan.  In  the 
former  war  "  tlie  peasants  had  to  be  driven 
almost  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet  into  box 
cars  for  shipment  to  Manchuria."     Now  : 

Before  the  Winter  Palace,  the  great  red  house  of  the 
Tsars,  stretches  an  enormous  semicircle,  which  forms 
one  of  the  greatest  arenas  in  Europe.  This  is  what 
we  see  now  :  More  than  100,000  people  of  all  classes 
and  of  all  ranks  standing  for  hoiu-s  in  the  blazing  sun 
before  the  building  within  which  is  their  monarch. 
Quietly  and  orderly  they  wait,  without  hysteria  and  with 
the  patience  so  characteristic  of  their  race.  At  last  the 
Tsar,  moved  by  the  magnitude  of  the  demonstration, 
appears  upon  the  balcony  overlooking  the  square. 
Instantly  the  entire  throng  sinks  upon  its  knees  and  with 
absolute  spontaneity  sings  the  deep-throated  Russian 
anthem.  For  perhaps  the  first  time  since  Napoleon's 
invasion  of  Russia  the  people  and  their  Tsar  were  one, 
and  the  strength  that  unity  spreads  in  a  nation  stirred 
throughout  the  Empire,  from  the  far  fringes  of  the 
i'acilio  littoral  to  the  German  frontier.* 

Of  all  this  in  those  last  days  of  July  and  the 
beginning  of  August,  1914,  the  Austrians  knew 
nothing.  They  knew  that  Russia  was  a  giixnt, 
but  attached  no  importance  to  any  attribute 
of  that  giant-hood  except  its  imwieldiness  and 
supposed  sloth.  All  the  best  Russian,  troops 
had,  moreover,  it  was  declared,  already  been 
sent  to  the  East  Prussian  theatre.     It  would  be 


*  From  the  volume  of  Mr.  Washburn's  correspondence 
to  The  Times  as  republished  under  the  titlo  of  "  Field 
Notes  from  the  Russian  Front."     (Andrew  Melrose.) 


long  before  she  could  marshal  new  armies  to 
.  oppose  an  advance  on  the  south.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  by  the  end  of  August  Russia  had, 
chiefly  from  the  districts  of  Kieff  and  Odessa, 
brought  into  the  fighting  line  on  the  Galician 
front  about  1,200,000  men.  Not  only  did 
they  outnumber  the  Austrian  Armies  brought 
against  them,  but  they  excelled  them  in 
fighting  power,  and,  even  more  conspicuously, 
they  were  better  generalled. 

The  Grand  Duke  Nicholas  and  tlie  Rassian 
General  Staff  took  accurate  measure  of  the 
Austrian  advance  from  the  outset,  and  the 
operations  with  which  they  met  it  will  stand 
as  a  model  for  similar  campaigns,  even  as  it 
produced,  perhaps,  the  most  gigantic  and  most 
desperate  fighting  which  up  to  that  time  the 
world  had  seen. 

Against  the  main  Austrian  advance  of 
General  Dankl  with  350,000  men  (roughly)  of 
the  1st  Army  no  serious  resistance  was  imme- 
diately offered.  It  was  allowed  to  come  on 
almost  to  Lublin,  to  within  11  niiles  of  wliich 
it  at  one  tune  penetrated.  We  have  seen  how 
the  3rd  or  Reserve .  Austrian  Army  had  been 
sent,  on  a  quite  futile  errand,  into  Poland  on 
the  left  side  of  the  Vistula  to  push  towards 
Kielce,  while  General  Daniel  went  due  nortli. 
There  is  very  little  information  as  to  incidents 
on  either  of  these  marches,  but  that  is  im- 
material.    We  know  that  Dankl's  Army  crossed 


RUSSIANS    MnTERINU    A    BURNiNU    TOW.N    IN    EASTERN    CMtlClA,    «' 

33—2 


24G 


TUK    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


the  frontier,  on  a  front  al)out  11  miliss  wide,  to 
the  west  of  Tarnogrod,  on  August  10.  TJie 
frontier  posts  hardly  stopped  to  have  a  brush 
with  the  Austrian  advance  cavalry  before 
falling  back.  A  second  brush,  but  no  more 
than  a  sldrmish,  occurred  at  Goraj,  and  some- 
thing a  little  more  serious  at  Krasnik.  The 
Austrians  seem  to  have  thought  that  those 
wisps  of  troops  \\  hich  met  them  (even  at  Ivras- 
nik,  of  which  the  authorities  in  Vienna  made 
much,  there  were  only  a  few  battahons)  con- 
stituted the  real  Russian  resistance,  and  they 
marched  joyfully.  They  were  going  through 
a  beautiful  country,  it  was  superb  weather,  and 
the  enemy,  after  doing  no  more  tlian  delay 
therrt  for  a  day  or  two,  fell  away  before  them, 
either  behind  the  fortified  position  of  Zamosc 
(which  the  Austrians  kept  on  their  right)  or 
back  towards  LubUn  and  Kholm.  Everything 
tended  to  verify  the  expectations  with  which 
they  had  set  out.  Russia,  for  all  her  vastness, 
was  unready  ;   and  war  was  a  fine  thing. 

Meanwhile,  on  the  line  from  Lublin  to 
Kholm,  Russia  had  been  massing  an  army — 
or  two  armies  cooperating  as  one — under  the 
dual  command  of  Generals  Ewarts  and  Plelive, 


though  General  Ivanoff  seeuis  to  have  beea 
in  supreme  direction  or  the  combined  force. 
Here  the  Russians  had  the  railway  beliind 
them,  to  Wai-saw  in  one  direction  and  to  Kieft' 
and  Odessa  in  the  other,  and  every  day,  as  the 
Austrians  drew  nearer,  tlieir  strengtii  increased. 
By  the  first  days  of  S(!ptember  the  Russian 
force  here  probably  amounted  to  upwards  of 
400,000  men.  The  Aastrians  were  within  15 
miles  of  Lublin  before  they  met  real  resistance 
and  General  Dankl  became  aware  that  he  liad 
a  worthy  opponent  in  front  of  him.  ,But  it  wa.s 
not  in  the  Russian  programme  to  strike  on  this 
line — -not  yet.  The  Austrians  found  them- 
selves checked,  and  then  definitely  held  up,  by 
forces  at  least  as  great  as  their  ov\'n  ;  and  the 
Russians  waited  till  news  came  that  certain 
things  had  happened  further  to  the  south-west. 
There,  it  will  be  reinembered,  was  tlie 
Austrian  second  army  tmder  General  von 
Auffenberg.  This  was  not  intended  to  be 
inmiediately  an  army  of  invasion,  ^'on  Auften- 
berg's  task  was  to  threaten,  but  probably  not 
push  much  beyond,  the  frontier  in  a  direction 
in  which  the  fortresses  of  Dubno,  Rovno  and 
l^utzk  lay  in  the  path  of  an  advance,  besides 


RUSSIAN    SOLDIERS    KISSING    AN    IKON    BEFORE    GOING    INTO    BATTLE. 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


247 


L 


A.:..^ML. 


RUSSIAN    TROOPS    ADVANCING    THROUGH    A    POLISH    TOWN. 


Vladimii'-Volyntk,  a  foi'tified  position  of  con- 
siderable importance.  His  chief  object  was 
to  detain  in  this  quarter  any  Russian  troops 
which  might  come  up  from  Odessa  and  the 
east,  and  to  protect  General  Dankl's  right 
flank  and  rear.  He  was  la\'ishly  provided  with 
cavalry,  with  which  he  proceeded  at  once  to 
harry  and  raid  the  frontier  at  various  points. 

Even  before  DankJ  had  reached  Russian  soil 
spluttering  hostilities  had  begun  all  along  the 
Volhynian  border  of  Galicia.  According  to 
reports  received  in  St.  Petersbiu-g  the  Austrians 
commenced  operations  12  hovii-s  before  the 
declaration  of  war,  on  August  6,  by  firing  on  the 
Russian  frontier  posts  at  W'oloczysk,  ^\  herc^  the 
Lemberg-Odessa  railway  line  crosses  the  fron- 
tier close  to  the  border  of  Podolia.  They  also 
blew  up  an  arch  of  the  railway  bridge,  but  did 
not  cross  the  frontier.  A  few  miles  to  the  soutli 
of  that  point  on  the  same  day,  however,  the 
frontier  seems  to  ha\-e  been  penetrated  in  botli 
directions  by  raiding  parties  in  the  neigiibour- 
hood  of  Tonioruda  and  Satanov.  These 
affairs,  however,  were  mere  fireworks.  More 
serious  matters  soon  showed  that  the  2nd 
Austrian  Ai'my  in  tliis  quarter  was  to  find  no 
-sucli     complaifsaut     recejition     as     was     being 


accorded  to  the  early  advances  of  the  1st  Army 
further  to  the  north. 

On  August  11  reports  from  Vienna  spoke  of 
a  Russian  cavalry  demonstration,  backed  by 
machine  guns,  against  Brody,  a  town  on  the 
Lemberg-Kieff  railway  a  couple  of  miles  on  the 
Austrian  side  of  the  frontier.  Two  days  later 
more  significant  news  came  from  St.  Peters- 
burg. An  Austrian  advance  m  some  strength 
had  apparently  been  nneditated  in  the  direction 
of  Vladimir-Volynsk,  but  before  the  Austrians 
could  cross  the  border  the  Russian  cavalry 
struck  them,  and  struck  unexpectedly  hard, 
at  Sokal,  the  terminus  of  the  railway  line 
fo  Rawa-Ruska  and  Lemberg.  Two  Austrian 
infantry  battalions  and  three  regiments  of 
cavalry  are  believed  to  have  suffered  here  very 
severely,  and  the  Austrian  force  fell  back 
towards  Lemberg  in  some  confusion.  The 
news  of  the  affair  at  Sokal  caused  great  re- 
joicing in  Russia.  In  view  of  the  number  of 
troops  engaged,  its  importance  seemed  at  the 
time  to  be  exaggerated.  But  these  were  early 
days  of  tlio  war.  A  success  at  this  point, 
moreover,  on  the  flanks  of  both  Austrian 
Armies,  had  evident  strategic  value,  tuid  the 
Sokal  incident  wtvs  nuieli  the  most  important 


248 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


'that  had  yet  occurred  on  tliis  front.  The 
'Russian  success  in  it  was  smartly  achieved  and 
excellently  complete.  It  was  then  accepted 
as  of  happy  augury  for  Russia ;  while  to  von 
Auffenberg  it  showed,  at  least,  that  the  enemy 
was  less  unready  than  had  been  supposed. 

Russia  was  very  far  from  being  unready. 
Four  days  after  the  Sokal  affair  it  was  officially 
announced  from  St.  Petersburg  that  the  general 
advance  of  the  Russian  Armies  against  Austria 
liad  begun,  as  it  also  began  against  Germany  in 
the  north,  it  being  then  the  seventeenth  day 
after  mobilization. 

The  chief  command  of  the  armies  on  this  front 
was  in  the  hands  of  General  Nikolas  Ruzsky. 
General  Ruzsky  had  been  Cliief  of  Staff  to 
General  Kaulbars  in  the  Japanese  War  and  had 
taken  a  conspicuous  part  in  the  reform  of  the 
Russian  military  system  which  followed.  What 
%vas,  perhaps,  more  important,  he  had  been  for 
some  time  commander  of  the  military  district 
of  Kieff,  where  he  had  not  only  brought  the 
organization  to  a  high  degree  of  efficiency  and 
Was  worshipped  by  his  men,  but  he  had  made 
it  his  business  to  render  himself  thoroughly 
familiar  with  the  topography  of  this  southern 
frontier  country.  He  had  here  the  advantage 
which    von    Hindenburg    possessed     in    East 


Prussia.  There  was  probably  no  highly- 
placed  oilicor  on  the  Austrian  side  who  knew  the 
configuration  of  Galicia  to  the  last  stream  and 
hill  and  by-road  as  it  was  known  to  the  Russian 
coimnander.  General  Ruzsky  was  already 
known  as  one  of  Russia's  most  conscientious 
and  most  scientific  soldiers.  He  soon  showed 
that  he  was  also  pre-eminently  a  fighting 
general,  with  a  capacity  for  hard  liitting  and 
vigorous  initiative. 

Cooperating  with  Ruzsky  on  his  left  was 
General  Alexis  Brusiloff,  a  typical  cavalry 
officer,  whose  active  service  record  dated  back 
to  the  war  with  Turkey  in  1877. 

The  total  Russian  force  under  these  com- 
manders was  probably  not  less  than  6.50,000 
men.  There  were  certainly  twelve  and 
apjjarently  fourteen  army  corps,  with  several 
divisions  of  cavalry.  Ruzsky,  under  liis  per- 
sonal command,  seems  to  have  had  eight 
a.'my  corps.  Brusiloff  had  not  less  than  five, 
with  at  least  three  divisions  of  Cossack  cavalry. 
The  practice  of  adding  extra  divisions  to 
regular  army  corps,  alluded  to  in  a  former 
chapter,  makes  it  difficult  to  estimate  the  actual 
number  of  men  composing  a  Russian  Army, 
wliich,  it  may  be  added,  is  one  of  its  objects. 
But  Ruzsky   in   the    2nd   Russian  Army   (the 


OIL-WELLS    IN    GALICIA. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


249 


RUSSIAN    TROOPS    IN    THE    HILLY    COUNTRY 


1st  being  that  londer  Ivanoff,  with  Ewarts  and 
Plehve,  at  Lublin)  had  probably  over  400,000 
men,  and  Brusiloff,  in  the  3rd  Army,  little  if 
any  less  than  300,000,  composed  of  regiments 
drawn  chiefly  irom  Odessa  and  Southern 
llussia.  Combined  they  had,  perhaps,  double 
the  strength  which  at  the  outset  von  Auffen- 
berg,  with  the  2nd  Austrian  Army,  would  have 
been  prepared  to  oppose  to  them.  As  soon  as 
von  Auffenberg  became  aware  of  the  strength 
of  the  Russian  Armies  against  him,  however,  he 
drew  on  the  3rd,  or  Reserve  Army  (which,  as 
we  have  seen,  had  been  pushed  into  Poland  as 
far  as  Kielce)  for  reinforcements.  These  troops, 
<'ro.s-;ing  the  Vistula  by  means  of  bridges  of 
boats  at  Josefow,  hurried  to  join  him,  and 
when  the  battle  wuh  really  joined  the  Archduke 
Joseph  Ferdinand's  Army  was  operating  in 
close  contact  with  that  of  von  Auffenberg.  In 
the  combined  armies  on  both  sides  there  were 
engaged  then,  in  the  operations  which  followed, 
not  less  than  1,200,000  men,  some  advantage 
in  numbers  still  remaining  on  the  side  of  the 
Russians. 

The  Russian  offensive  definitely  began  on 
August  17.  At  the  moment  when  General 
Dankl  to  the  north,  with  the  1st  Austrian  Army, 
was  finding  himself  held  up  in  his  progress 
towards  Lublin,  General  Ruzsky  threw  the 
whole  weight  of  his  attack  against  von  Auffen- 


berg. The  Russian  plan  of  campaign  was 
simple  but  admirable.  With  his  superiority 
in  numbers,  Ruzsky  could  afford  to  aim  at 
enveloping  the  enemy  on  both  flanks.  With 
the  2nd,  and  larger,  of  the  two  armies  he  flung 
himself,  advancing  along  the  railway  from 
Dubno,  at  the  Austrian  left  and  centre,  cross- 
ing the  frontier  on  August  22  and  occupying 
Brodj'  with  only  trifhng  opposition  on  the 
following  day.  On  the  22nd  also  Brusiloff, 
on  his  left,  had  crossed  the  frontier  at 
VVoloczysk,  the  frontier  station  on  the  Lem- 
berg-Odessa  railway.  As  the  railway  line 
changed  gauge  at  the  frontier,  the  Russian 
locomotives  and  carriages  were  of  no  service 
beyond  it,  and  the  Austrians,  on  the  enemy's 
approach,  had  rushed  away  as  much  of  their 
own  rolling  stock  as  they  could  towards  Lemberg 
and  destroj'ed  what  they  could  not  take  away. 
As  has  been  explained  in  a  former  chapter, 
however,  the  Ru.ssians  were  perforce  less 
accustomed  to  rely  on  railwajs  than  were  tlieir 
opponents,  and  as  soon  as  they  were  away  from 
railways  they  much  exceeded  the  Austrians 
in  mobility  and  speed  of  movement.  A  good 
wagon  road  ran  parallel  to  the  railway  towards 
I^emberg,  pushing  along  which  Brusiloff's 
advance  cavalry  on  tiie  23rd  hustled  tin- 
I'ctreating  Austrians,  after  some  three  hours' 
fighting,     out     of     Tarnopol.     Tlie     Austrians 


260 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


M.  KRAVGHENKO,    THE    WELL-KNOWN    RUSSIAN   ARTIST,  SKETCHING    A    SUSPECT. 


then  fell  back  on  the  line  of  the  Ztota  Lipa, 
an  affluent  of  the  Dniester,  which  runs  almost 
due  southward,  and  on  the  25th  and  26th  there 
was  heavy  fighting  along  this  stream,  especially 
around  Brzezany. 

Up  to  tliis  point  Brusiloff's  Army  had 
encountered  only  the  resistance  of  small 
detachments  of  the  enemy,  frontier  posts  and 
bodies  of  skirmishers  thrown  out  to  delay  its 
advance.  Xo  considerable  force  of  Austrians 
seems  to  have  penetrated  here  much  beyond 
the  Ztota  Lipa,  on  the  eastern  side  of  which 
there  runs  a  line  of  small  hills,  which  offered 
an  excellent  defensive  position.  Here  the 
Austrians  had  set  themselves  hurriedly  to  make 
field  works,  and  they  were  still  at  work  on  the 
trenches  when  the  Cossack  cavalry  came 
driving  the  screen  of  Austrian  skirmishers 
before  them.  The  position  was  too  formidable 
for  the  cavalry  to  handle  alone,  and  they 
waited  for  the  main  body  of  the  army  to  come 
up.  Even  then  the  Austrians  offered  an  un- 
expectedly stubborn  resistance,  and  it  took 
two  days  of  sharp  fighting  before  the  position, 
which  extended  some  20  mUes  from  north  to 
south,  was  finally  carried  by  direct  assault, 
and  the  Austrians  fell  back,  seemingly  at 
moderate    speed    and    in    good    order,    in    the 


direction   of   Halicz   at   the   confluence   of   the 
Gnita  Lipa  with  the  Dniester. 

While  Brusiloff  was  thus  beginning  to  press 
von  Auffenberg's  right,  Ruzsky  was  hammering 
his  left  and  centre.  Of  tlie  details  of  the 
fightmg  there  we  know  little  or  notliing.  After 
crossing  the  frontier  at  and  between  Brody  and 
Sokal,  Ruzsky's  Army  spread  out  on  a  wide 
front,  the  centre  pushing  straight  for  Busk  and 
Krasne  in  the  direct  line  towards  Lemberg, 
while  the  right,  advancing  almost  due  west, 
aimed  at  driving  a  wedge  in  between  the  army 
of  von  Auffenberg  and  that  of  Dankl  to  the 
north,  and  pressed  with  all  its  weight  on  von 
Auffenberg's  left.  Meanwhile  Ruzsky's  own 
left  felt  its  way  southward  towards  a  junction 
with  Brusiloff.  The  Austrians  were  forced 
back  in  all  directions,  but  slowly  and  resisting 
gallantly.  On  Ruzsky's  right  and  centre, 
especially,  it  is  known  that  the  fighting  was 
sustained  and  severe  and  accompam"ed  by 
very  hea\'y  losses  on  both  sides.  In  liis  army 
were  some  of  the  ^•ery  best  of  the  Russian  first 
line  troops,  and  narratives  of  those  who  took 
j3art  in  the  operations  showed  that  the  Russians 
attacked  every  kind  of  position  with  the  same 
recklessness,  and  the  AnstriaiLs.  though  con- 
tinually overpowered,  fought  desperately.    The 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


2.31 


attention  of  the  Western  world  was  at  this  time 
engrossed  in  the  stirring  events  which  were 
occurring  in  France  and  Belgium,  and  so  little 
v>'as  recorded  of  the  operations  in  Galicia 
beyond  the  mere  statement  of  the  successive 
steps  in  the  Russian  advance  that  the  impres- 
sion was  created  that  that  advance  was  an 
easy  one.  This  is  far  from  being  the  truth. 
General  Ruzsky  had  a  week  of  such  stern 
fighting  as  would  at  another  time  have  fired 
the  world's  imagination  before  he  had  succeeded 
in  forcing  his  way  through  on  the  line  from 
Sokal  to  Tomaszow  on  the  right,  and  had 
driven  the  enemy's  centre  back  to  the  Bug  at 
Krasne  and  across  the  railway  at  Zlocow.  By 
that  time  Brusiloff  had  carried  the  position  on 
the  Ztota  Lipa,  and  his  right  came  in  touch 
u  ith  Ruzsky 's  left.  With  this  juncture  closed 
v\  hat  may  be  considered  the  preliminary  stage 
of  the  Lemberg  campaign. 

Von  Auffenberg's  Army  as  yet  not  only  was 
not  beaten,  but  it  was  hardly  shaken.  It  fell 
back  into  the  strong  and  carefully  prepared 
line  of  defences  in  front  of  Lemberg,  stretching 
over  a  front  of  some  70  or  80  miles,  from  near 
Busk  in  the  north  to  HaUcz  on  the  Dniester  in 
the  south.     Along  the  greater  part  of  its  length 


this  line  ran  through  a  broken  region  of  vol- 
canic hills,  in  places  very  irregular  and  con- 
taining extinct  craters,  ending  to  the  south  in 
a  ridge  roughly  parallel  to  the  course  of  the 
Gnita  Lipa  as  far  as  the  Dniester.  The  rail- 
way running  due  east  of  Lemberg  skirted  the 
northern  end  of  this  broken  country.  North 
of  the  railway  the  Austrian  left  rested  on  the 
river  Bug  and  the  lake  district  about  Krasne. 
It  was  a  line  of  great  natural  strength,  and  mile 
after  naile  of  trenches  with  extensive  barbed 
wire  entanglements,  and  here  and  there  strong 
fortifications  of  steel  and  concrete,  made  it  a 
most  formidable  position  to  take  by  assault  at 
any  point.  After  the  jimcture  of  Ruzsky  and 
Brusiloff,  on  August  26-27,  the  Russians  lost  no 
time  in  opening  the  attack  along  the  entire  front. 
Knowledge  of  incidents  of  the  terrific  fighting 
which  filled  the  following  days  is  almost 
entirely  lacking.  Wliat  is  known  is  that  the 
Russians  attacked  with  fury  and  with  a  dis- 
regard for  life  which  undoubtedly  cost  them 
very  dearly.  Again  and  again  bayonet  charges 
were  pushed  home,  and  individual  positions 
were  taken  and  retaken.  At  the  end  of  two 
days  the  Austrian  front  was  still  unbroken, 
but  the  battle  was  decided. 


RESERVISTS   IN    VIENNA. 


25-2 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY. 'OF    THE    WAIL 


To  General  Brusiloff  and  liis  corps  com- 
mander, General  Radko  Dmitrieff  (the  Bul- 
garian hero  of  Lule  Burgas  and  Kirk  Kilisse), 
belong  the  lionoui-  of  the  crucial  and  brilliant 
operation  which  detennined  the  fate  of  the 
battle.  After  forcing  the  crossing  of  the 
Ztota  Lipa  on  August  26,  while  his  right  wing 
niade  connexion  with  Ruzsky  in  the  north, 
BrusilofT's  left  swung  wide  to  the  south  as  far 
as  the  valley  of  the  Dniester  itself.  It  niu.-t 
have  been  an  extraordinary-  inarch.  'J'lie 
country  is  rough,  and  not  only  devoid  of  rail- 
ways, but  almost  innocent  of  roads.  On 
August  30  the  main  bod\r  of  this  flanking  force 
had  arrived  before  Halicz,  and  on  the  following 
day -the  assault  began.  During  that  day  more 
guns  came  up,  and  a  furious  and,  as  it  proved, 
irresistible  attack  was  concentrated  on  a  point 
on  the  enen-iy's  position  near  the  little  village 
of  Botszonce.  The  Austrians  fought  courage- 
ously, and  the  condition  of  the  field  afterwards, 
the  ground  everywhere  ploughed  up  with  shell 
fire,  and  almost  every  yard  strewn  with  frag- 
ments of  projectiles  and  tattered  equipment, 
showed  how  desperate  the  struggle  had  been. 
The  Russian  9th  and  57th  infantry  seem  to 
have  carried  through  the  final  assault  with  the 


bayonet  under  co\er  of  a  \  ery  tf)rrent  of  shell 
fire.  Their  losses  were  terrible,  but  b\-  night- 
fall of  August  31  a  breach  some  kilometres 
wide  had  been  made  in  the  Austrian  position. 

Once  the  line  had  been  pierced  the  entire 
Austrian  right  gave  way.  A  last  despairing 
stand  seems  to  have  been  made  in  the  village 
of  Botszonce  itself,  but  the  Russian  guns, 
pushing  forward,  imlimbered  on  ihe  very  hills 
on  which  the  enemy  had  fought  so  stubb  irnly, 
and  the  centre  of  tlie  little  town  was  qui  kly 
reduced  to  a  heap  of  ruins.  The  I'ctreat  of  the 
Austrians  at  this  point  then  became  a  headlong 
flight.  As  the  Russian  offic  al  statement 
worded  it:  "The  Austrian  Army  temporarily 
lost  all  fighting  value."  The  road,  strewn 
with  abandoned  guns,  transport,  and  all  the 
flotsam  and  jetsam  of  a  routed  army,  showed 
abundant  evidences  of  a  panic-stricken  stam- 
pede for  safety.  On  the  scene  of  the  fighting 
around  Botszonce  and  Halicz  the  Russians 
buried  4,800  Avistrian  dead,  and  they  captured 
32  guns,  some  of  which  had  been  moiuited  in 
positions  from  which  they  never  came  into  use. 

At  Halicz  a  fine  steel  bridge  spanned  the 
river  Dniester,  and  the  only  thought  of  the 
extreme   right   of   the   broken  Austrian  Army 


HUNGARIAN    LANDWEHR   STARTING    FOR    THE    FRONT. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE    WJR. 


253 


■>"    -  ^  -.•/  "  -  .i^-#Wf<    -V- 


SUSPENSION    BRIDGE    CONSTRUCTED    BY    AUSTRIAN    ENGINEEKS. 


seems  to  have  been  to  get  across  this  bridge. 
But  the  Russian  cavalry  was  pressing  close 
on  the  heels  of  the  fugitives,  and  in  such  haste 
were  the  Austrian  engineers  to  destroy  the 
structure  and  stop  pursuit  that,  it  is  said, 
one  party  blew  up  the  bridge  while  another 
party  was  still  at  work  mining  one  of  the  piers, 
with  the  result  that  all  the  latter  were  destroyed 
with  the  bridge  The  only  other  bridge  in  this 
part  of  the  Dniester,  at  Chodorow,  was  also 
destroyed,  and  the  pursuit  southward  was 
checked  until  the  Russian  engineers  could  throw 
pontoons  across  the  stream.  This  they  suc- 
ceeded in  doing  on  the  following  day,  when 
Cossack  cavalry  to  the  strength,  it  is  said,  of 
three  divisions,  crossed  the  river  and  caught 
up  with  the  rear  of  the  retreating  enemy. 
Not  much  behind  the  cavalry  followed  some 
divisions  of  Brusiloff's  infantry,  which,  without 
giving  the  enemy  time  to  take  breath,  pushed 
on  across  the  south  of  Lemberg  towards  Stryj. 

Once  the  extreme  right  of  the  Austrian  line 
was  shattered,  the  whole  line  disintegrated 
rapidly  ;  the  more  so  as  at  the  other  extreme 
Ruzsky  had  also  definitely  attained  the  mastery. 
There  also,  while  every  mile  of  the  Austrian 
front    was    being    pitilessly    pounded,    a    wid(^ 


flanking  movement  was  being  executed,  en- 
veloping the  Austrian  left  from  the  direction  of 
Kamionka.  While  one  end  of  the  Austrian 
line  was  broken,  the  other  was  being  bent 
back.  On  the  shortening  front  the  triumphant 
Russians  redoubled  the  fury  of  their  attack, 
and  soon  the  whole  Austrian  Army  was  in 
flight,  and  the  great  city  of  Lemberg  was  in 
possession  of  the  Russians. 

At  many  points  the  retreat  of  von 
Auffenberg's  Army  became  a  panic-stricken 
and  disorderly  rout,  the  misery  of  which  was 
intensified  by  a  succession  of  storms  and 
drenching  rains,  by  which  much  of  the  country 
wa.s  flooded.  The  Russians  had  suffered 
tremendous  losses  in  the  two  days,  diuring  which 
they  had  flung  themselves  in  a  continuous 
succession  of  reckless  charges  against  the 
Atistrian  positions.  But  those  los.ses  were 
nothing  (ujrnpared  to  what  they  now  inflicted 
on  the  enemy.  On  September  2  the  GrantI 
Duke  Niciiolas  was  able  to  telegraph  to  the  Tsar: 

I  uin  liappy  to  gladiloii  your  Majesty  witli  (lie  news 
of  tho  victory  won  by  tlic  Army  of  General  Hu/.sky  under 
Lwow  (F^omherfi)  after  seven  days'  uninterrupted  (indit- 
ing. The  Austriiins  are  retreating  in  eomploto  ilisorder, 
in  some  places  running  awav.  abandoning  guns,  riQes. 
artillery  parks,  and  baggage  trains.  ' 

o — o 


254 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB 


GENERAL    DANKL. 

The  victorious  Russians  pressed,  almost 
literally,  upon  their  heels.  There  seems  to  have 
been,  in  the  first  moment  of  defeat,  no  attempt 
at  any  systematic  retreat  or  delaying  rear- 
guard action,  though  it  is  said  that  the  Austrians 
adopted  the  rather  crude  device  of  placing 
their  Slav  regiments  in  the  rear.  When  the 
Russian  pursuers  discovered  the  ruse,  they  are 
reported  to  have  endeavoured  to  meet  it  by 
using  a  high-angle  fire  with  their  artillery,  so  as 
to  reach  the  Austrian  troops  beyond.  If  this  is 
true,  it  would  in  a  measure  explain  the  enormous 
number  of  prisoners  that  were  taken  ;  and 
there  seems  no  doubt  that  considerable  bodies 
of  the  retreating  troops  did  svu-render  very 
willingly.  Austrians  afterwards  made  com- 
plaint that  they  had  been  betrayed  by  their 
Slav  comrades,  just  as,  in  the  disasters  which 
were  to  follow,  Germans  made  similar  accusa- 
tions against  the  Austrians.  The  Russians 
appear  to  have  taken  no  less  than  64,000 
prisoners,  and  the  lowest  estimate  of  the  total 
Austrian  losses  (including  Idlled,  wounded,  and 
prisoners)  was  130,000,  and  some  authorities 
placed  them  at  nearly  double  that  niunber. 
They  were  certainly  very  heavy. 

There  was  at  the  time  much  criticism  of  the 
Austrian  commander  for  failing  to  rally  at,  and 
liold,  the  city  of  Lemberg  itself.    The  criticism 


is  unjustifiable.  Thougli  it  is  true  tliat  th« 
position  which  had  been  so  stubbornly  de- 
fended was  over  10  miles  east  of  Lemberg, 
after  the  line  was  once  broken  the  city  was 
indefensible.  We  have  seen  how  Brusiloff's 
pursuing  army  swept  to  the  west  of  the  city. 
Ruzsky  was  already  closing  on  the  place  from 
the  north.  The  iimer  defences  were  not  sucli 
as  to  enable  the  city  to  resist  for  any  length 
of  time.  To  have  attempted  to  hold  it  would 
only  have  been  to  surrender  it  to  the  horrors  of 
bombardment,  and  to  sacrifice  whatever  troops 
were  left  to  defend  it.  It  could  not  have 
interposed  any  material  obstacle  to  the  Russian 
advance. 

Lemberg  or  Lwow  or  Lowenburg  was 
originally  Leopolis,  and  was  founded  in  1259 
by  the  Ruthenian  prince  Daniel  for  liis  son 
Leo.  It  had  had  a  chequered  and  stormy 
history,  having  been  captured  by  Casimir  the 
Great  in  1340,  besieged  by  the  Cossacks  in 
1648  and  1655,  and  by  the  Tiu-ks  in  1672, 
captured  by  Charles  XII.  of  Sweden  in  1704, 
and  bombarded  in  1848.  Capital  of  the  crown- 
land  of  Galicia,  it  had  grown  to  be  a  beautiful 
city  of  parks  and  wide  boulevards,  with  three 
cathedrals,  many  churches,  and  important 
public  monuments.  It  was  the  seat  of  a 
University,  and  contained  a  most  valuable 
library  of  boolcs  and  manuscripts,  and  many 
treasures  of  antiquarian  and  liistoric  interest. 
After  its  evacuation  in  September,  1914,  the 
Austrians  explained  that  it  was  in  order  to 
save  all  these  treasvires  from  destruction  that 
the  place  had  not  been  defended.  That  may 
have  been  taken  into  consideration.  Certainly, 
the  civil  population  was  strongly  opposed  to  its 
being  defended.  That  population  was  extra- 
ordinarily cosmopolitan,  and  contained  many 
elements — a  minority  probably,  but  a  very 
strong  minority — whose  sympathy  was  with 
Russia,  and  who  welcomed  the  Russians  with 
enthusiasm.  What  was  more  important,  how- 
ever, was  that  from  a  miUtarj'  point  of  view 
the  attempt  to  hold  it  would  have  been  futile. 

Apart  from  the  moral  effect  of  its  capture, 
the  actual  strategical  value  to  the  Russians  of 
the  possession  of  Lemberg  was  of  the  greatest. 
From  it  railwaj'^  lines  radiated  m  all  directions, 
giving  the  captors  direct  communication,  subject 
onlj'^  to  the  inconvenience  of  the  change  of  gauge 
at  the  frontier,  with  Kiefi  and  Odessa,  with  their 
fortified  positions  at  Dubno  and  Rovno  and 
thence  with  Petrograd  (the  nauie  of  which  had 
now  been  changed  from  St.   Petersburg),   with 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAB. 


255 


THH    AUSTRIAN    FAILURE:    IN    GALICIA. 

1.    Distributing  bread  to  the   poor  of  Vienna.     2.    Types  of   Austrian  prisoners.     3.    Refugees  in  Calicin. 
4.    Austrian  guns  captured  at   I  eniherg.     5.    Austrian  prisoners  from   I.embcrg. 


250 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


Brpst-Litovsk  and  Warsaw.  Immediatoly  after 
crossing  the  frontier  the  Russians  had  begun  to 
change  a  number  of  raUway  engines  and  car- 
riages to  fit  the  Austrian  gauge,  but  not  least 
welcome  among  the  trophies  which  awaited 
them  in  Lemberg  were  thirty  locomotives  and 
an  immense  number  of  railway  vehicles  of  all 
kinds.  Tl^ie  Russians  are  said  to  have  rushed 
the  station  with  such  rapidity  that  they  caught 
trains  loaded  with  war  materials  ready  to  steam 
out.  The  ability  of  the  Russian  Armies  to 
operate  and  move  about  without  the  help  of 
railways  has  already  been  referred  to.  Through- 
out this  campaign  hitherto  the  transport  both  of 
ammunition  and  commissariat  had  been  con- 
ducted by  road,  independently  of  any  railways, 
chiefly  in  carts  diawn  by  the  tough  little 
Siberian  horses.  Few  more  remarkable  inci- 
dents were  produced  by  the  war  than  the 
achievement,  inentioned  above,  of  Ruzsky's 
column,  which  for  five  or  six  days  "  lived  on 
the  country  "  in  the  form  of  the  fruit  of  the 
orchards,  or  the  feat  of  Brusiloff  in  striking 
at  Halicz  with  the  rapidity  with  whicR  he  did. 
Not  only  was  no  defence  of  Lemberg 
attempted,  but  very  few  of  the  retreating 
Austrian  troops  passed  through  the  city. 
Various  stories  crept  into  contemporary  reports 
of  hand-to-hand  fighting  in  the  streets.  These 
seem  to  have  been  wholly  imaginative.  On 
September    3    the    Russians    entered    the    citj- 


without  a  shot  being  fired  and  vnthout  any  sort 
of  disturbance  or  any  excesses  on  the  part  of 
the  victorious  troops.  The  results  of  the 
great  \-ictory  were  communicated  to  the  pub- 
lic in  the  following  brief  official  announcement : 

6even  days  of  the  most  stubborn  fighting  m  Ea<tern 
Galicia  have  resulted  in  a  complete  victory  for  the 
Russians.  Five  Austrian  Corps  were  completely 
routed,  and  are  retreating  in  disordu-r  westward,  abandon- 
ing their  arms  and  baggage. 

Besides  an  enormous  number  of  killed,  the  Austrians 
lost  not  less  than  40,000  prisoners,  inclu.ling  many 
generals.  The  roads  of  retreat  of  the  Austrians  are  so 
encumbered  with  carts,  guns,  and  impedimenta  that  the 
pursuing  troops  are  unable  to  use  the  roads. 

Panic  is  spreading  among  the  Austrian  troops.  During 
the  seven  days  the  Russians  have  taken  over  200  guns, 
■several  colours,  and  about  70,000  prisoners.  Lwow 
(Lemberg)  is  in  our  hands. 

The  news  of  the  victory  was  received  in 
Russia  with  almost  frenzied  jubilation.  Grand 
Dulce  Nicholas  conveyed  the  information  of 
the  occupation  of  Lemberg  to  the  Tsar  "  with 
extreme  joy  and  thanking  God."  General 
Ruzsky  received  the  Fourth  Class  of  the  Order 
of  St.  George  for  "  liis  services  in  the  preceding 
battles  "  and  the  Third  Class  for  the  capture 
of  Lemberg.  General  Brusiloff  received  the 
Fourth  Class  of  the  same  Order.  Thanks- 
giving services  were  held  throughout  the 
Russian  Empire  to  celebrate  "  the  reunion 
with  Galicia "  and  General  Count  Bobrinsky 
was  appointed  Governor-General  of  the  pro- 
vince.    Everywhere  it  was  felt  that  the  imoor- 


UFFICERS'    QUARTERS    IN    AN    AUSTRIAN    TRENCH. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE     WAR. 


257 


AN    ABANDONED    AUSTRIAN    REDOUBT    NEAR    LEMBERG. 


tance  of  the  indirect  effects  of  tliis  victory, 
in  the  disconcerting  of  all  the  German  plans 
on  both  fronts,  could  hardly  be  exaggerated. 

It  is  now  necessary  to  turn  to  the  theatre 
ot  operations  further  to  the  north.  Here,  it 
will  be  remembered,  was  the  scene  of  the  chief 
Austrian  offensive,  by  the  1st  Army  under 
General  Dankl,  who  was  believed  to  have  mider 
his  command  between  300,000  and  400,000  men. 
We  left  him,  in  the  middle  of  August,  hung  up 
by  the  armies  of  Generals  Ewarts  and  Plehve, 
which  barred  his  way  towards  Lublin  and 
Kholm.  For  the  moment  the  Russians  were 
content  merely  to  bar  his  way.  They  were 
gathering  strength,  and  waited  their  time  to 
strike  until  Danld's  Army  was  safely  cut  off 
from  reinforcements  and  until  their  advance 
would  synchronize  with  the  fruition  of  the  ad- 
vance of  Ruzsky  and  Brusiloff  on  Lemberg. 
It  was  not  until  September  6  that  a  characteris- 
tically simple  official  announcement  was  made 

in  Petrograd  : 

Our  armies  on  September  i  assumed  the  offensive 
along  a  front  between  the  Vistula  and  the  Bug. 

The  announcement  was  received  by  the  Rus- 
sian people,  flushed  and  rejoicing  over  the 
victory  of  Lemberg,  with  immense  enthusiasm. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  in  the  advance  of 
Ruzsky's  formidable  army,  part  of  the  Austrian 
Reserve  Army,  under  Archduke  Joseph  Ferdi- 
nand, had  been  hastily  withdrawn  from  its 
position  in  Poland  on  the  left  of  the  Vistula, 
across  the  rear  of  Dankl's  Army,  to  help  General 
von  Auffenberg.  The  Austrian  General  Staff, 
in   a   communique  published   on   September    3, 


referred  to  this  movement  as  an  "  advance." 
It  seems  undoubted  that  even  at  that  early 
date  some  German  troops  were  also  being 
brought  up  on  the  same  errand.  Part  of  the 
Austrian  reinforcements  were  absorbed  into 
the  army  of  von  Auffenberg  and  had  shared 
his  catastrophe.  Part  remained  to  screen 
Dankl's  right  flank.  From  this  time  onward, 
however,  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  trace  the 
organization  of  the  Austrian  Armies,  the  fact 
being  that,  under  stress  of  the  emergency,  that 
organization  was  continually  changing.  The 
plans  of  the  campaign  had  been  drawn  up  on 
the  assumption  of  a  successful  and  victorious 
advance.  As  soon  as  things  went  wrong, 
their  weakness  appeared.  When  Auffenberg' a 
Army  began  to  get  into  difficulties  and  ita 
advance  was  checked,  the  gap  betAveen  its  left 
and  Dankl's  right  and  rear  grew  uncomfort- 
ably wide.  The  hurrying  of  the  troops  from 
the  left  bank  of  the  Vistula  was  an  effort  to 
fill  that  gap.  Then,  as  the  Russian  strength 
grew  daily  more  apparent,  an  entire  new 
Austrian  Army  was  hastily  fonned,  composed, 
apparently,  of  parts  of  the  Archduke  Joseph 
Ferdinand's  (3rd  or  Reserve)  Army,  increased 
by  two  corps  withdrawn  from  the  Serbian  fron- 
tier and  some  indeterminate  number  of  German 
troops.  This  4th  Army,  which  appears  to  have 
been  under  the  command  of  the  Arclidiike, 
was  hereafter  spoken  of  in  the  Russian  official 
annovmcements  as  the  "  Toniaszow  Army." 
German  troops  from  Breslau  were  also  brought 
up  to  strengthen  Dankl's  left,  whicli  lay  upt)u 
the  Vistula  at  Opolie. 


258 


THE    TIMES    hislOEY    OF    THE    WAPx. 


BATTERY    OF    HEAVY    HOWITZERS. 


During  the  last  days  of  August  and  the  first 
few  days  of  September  there  was  a  good  deal 
of  confused  fighting  between  detached  forces  on 
either  side  in  the  frontier  region  between 
Zamosc  and  Sokal.  From  Berlin  and  Vienna 
official  claims  were  made  to  some  minor  suc- 
cesses, which  a  semi-official  statement  from 
Petrograd  immediately  declared  to  be  "  wilful 
falsehoods."  Out  of  the  mass  of  reports  and 
contradictions,  clamis  and  counter-claims,  all 
that  emerges  clearly  is  that  the  Russian  wedge 
was  successfully  driven  through  to  Tomaszow, 
where  the  Austrians  suffere'd  a  severe  and 
definite  defeat,  contemporary  reports  asserting 
that  among  their  slain  were  two  generals. 
From  here  the  Austrians  seem  to  have  fallen 
back  to  the  swampy  eovmtry  about  Bilgoraj 
and  upon  Tarnogrod.  These  Russian  suc- 
cesses put  a  final  barrier  between  the  two  great 
sections  of  the  Austrian  forces.  All  interest 
now  centred  in  the  fate  of  Dankl's  1st  Army. 

The  fighting  on  the  Lublin-Kholiu  front, 
entirely  defensive  at  first  on  the  j^art  of  the 
Russians,  had  grown  sterner  day  by  day  until 
it  became  one  continuous  battle  along  the 
whole  line.  With  the  defeat  of  von  Auffeii- 
berg,  and  the  threat  to  its  right  and  rear,  the 
situation  of  the  northern  army  became  so 
evidently  critical  that  it  was  necessary  for 
General  Danlil  to  force  a  decision.     Either  he 


must  break  tlirough  the  Russian  defence  or 
fall  back.  A  last  desperate  effort  to  pierce 
the  wall  of  resistance  between  Lublin  and 
Ivliolm  was  made  on  September  2.  when  the 
10th  Austrian  Army  Corps  led  the  attack 
against  the  weaker  portioii  of  the  Russian  line, 
and  it  appears  to  have  reached  to  within  11 
miles  of  Lublin.  There  it  was  beaten  back 
with  heavy  losses.  In  the  retirement  5,000 
prisoners  were  left  in  Russian  hands.  With 
this  effort  the  Aastrian  offensive  spent  itself, 
and  the  game  passed  into  the  enemy's  hands. 
The  Russian  offensive  definitely  began,  we 
have  seen,  on  September  4  ;  and  it  began  aits- 
piciously.  "  The  enemy's  centre,  lying  in  the 
region  west  of  Ivi-asuostaw,"  said  the  imper- 
turbable Russian  official  announcement  two 
days  later  (Krasnostaw  being  almost  due 
north  of  Zamosc,  about  lialf-way  to  the  centre 
of  a  line  drawn  from  Lublin  to  Kholm).  "  wa.*; 
particularly  disorganized.  The  45th  Austrian 
Regiment  was  surrounded  and  surrendered, 
including  the  colonel,  44  officers,  and  1,600 
men."  The  same  annoiuicement  contained 
the  interesting  information  that  "  a  (German 
Division,  coming  to  the  relief  of  the  Austrians, 
was  attacked  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Vistula." 
Tlie  Russian  troops  there  must  presvunably 
have  come  from  Iwan'_'orod.  But  Russian 
armies    were    indeed     "growing    out    of    the 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE    WAR. 


•259 


(>urth  "  ;  and  nothing  is  more  strilcing  in  the 
whole  of  this  Gahcian  campaign  than  the 
accuracy  with  which  the  Russian  General 
Staff  took  the  measure  of  their  enemy's 
strategy  at  every  point,  and  the  promptitude 
with  which  it  met  and  countered  each  move. 

When  once  the  Austrian  1st  Army  had 
started  to  retreat  it  was  given  no  rest,  and  it  is 
impossible  to  regard  this  phase  of  the  opera- 
tions in  Gahcia  without  profound  sympathy 
with  Dankl's  Army  and  some  admiration  for  it. 
In  some  ways  it  might  be  compared  to  the 
falling  back  of  the  British  Army  from  Mons. 
There  was  not,  however,  on  any  part  of  the 
Austrian  front  the  same  terrible  pressure  from 
a  hopelessly  overwhelming  force.  There  is 
good  evidence  indeed  that  over  much  of  the 
front — the  Austrian  right-centre — the  Russians 
were  in  a  numerical  inferiority.  That  was  im- 
material, however,  retreat  being  necessary  to 
the  Austrians  as  the  only  alternative  to  being 
left  isolated  and  ultimately  destroyed.  As  in 
France,  the  movement  was  strategically  obli- 
gatory in  conformity  with  the  movement  of 
another  army,  which  army  was  also  falling  back 
from    the    right.     And    the    spectacle    of    tlir 


Austrian  retreat  is  uiade  the  more  dreadful 
by  the  mere  size  of  the  army.  The  front  on 
which  the  army  of  something  over  300,000 
men  lay  extended  was  approximately  80  miles. 
As  it  fell  back,  the  left  wing  hemmed  in  by  tlie 
river  Vistula  and  the  right  subject  to  con- 
tinuovis  pressure  from  the  Russian  forces  to  the 
east,  where  swampy  country,  moreover,  barred 
a  direct  retreat,  this  front  was  continually  con- 
tracting. By  the  time  the  army  reached  the  San, 
the  crossing  of  which,  so  far  as  the  bulk  of  the 
force  was  concerned,  had  to  be  made  by  some 
four  or  five  bridges  at  different  points,  the 
front  had  contracted  to  less  than  40  miles. 
That  such  a  movement  might  easily  have 
degenerated  into  a  panic,  accompanied  by 
awful  slaughter,  until  the  whole  army  had 
either  been  obliterated  or  had  surrendered  is 
evident.  In  Russia  some  such  termination  to 
the  incident  was  looked  forward  to  with  some- 
thing like  confidence,  and  it  was  evident  that 
in  other  countries  also  the  fate  of  the  Austrian 
1st  Army  was  regarded  as  practically  sealed. 
General  Dankl  deserves  full  credit  for,  at 
least,  escaping  this  final  catastrophe,  however 
serious  his  losses  were. 


AUSTRIAN    CHIEF    OF    STAFF. 


260 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


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MAP    ILLUSTRATING    THR    GALICIAN    CAMPAIGN. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAB. 


261 


The  high -water-mark  of  the  Austrian  advance 
on  this  front  would  be  represented  by  a  Uno 
drawn  from  Opolie  on  the  Vistula,  through 
Krasnostaw  to  Grabiowiec,  whence  the  line 
curved  southward  in  the  direction  of  Tyszowce, 
in  the  region  of  which  place  it  was  that  the 
Austrian  General  Staff  had  claimed  one  of  the 
successes  which  Petrograd  had  so  promptly 
denied.  We  have  seen  how  the  Russian 
advance  against  this  front,  from  the  direction 
of  Lublin  and  Kholm,  had  begun  with  the 
"  disorganization "  of  the  Austrian  centre  at 
Krasnostaw.  The  next  blow  was  delivered 
at  the  Austrian  left,  beginning  at  Opolie  and 
thence  developing  all  along  the  line  to  Tm-obin. 
With  sound  strategy  it  was  on  this  wing  of  the 
Russian  Army  that  the  chief  strength  had  been 
concentrated,  leaving  other  parts  of  the  line, 
as  has  already  been  said,  comparatively  weak. 
All  new  troops  that  came  up  had  been  hurried 
over  to  the  right  wing,  on  the  reasoning  that, 
even  if  the  Austrians  succeeded  in  brealdng 
through  the  front  where  it  was  weaker,  near 
K^holm,  it  would  only  make  their  being  ulti- 
mately surrounded  the  more  certain. 

The  Russian  attack  on  this  Opolie-Turobin 
section  of  the  line  seems  to  have  been  irresis- 
tible, the  enemy  being  driven  southward, 
parallel  to  the  course  of  the  Vistula,  in  con- 
fusion. Many  of  the  fugitives  threw  away  their 
arms  in  panic,  and  for  nineteen  miles  the  Russian 
cavalry  was  busy  with  the  demoralized  rear- 
guard of  the  flying  enemy.  From  here  on, 
it  was  a  continual  rimning  fight,  the  Russians 
never  cea-«ing  to  press,  the  Austrians  defending 
their  rear  as  well  as  they  could  while  making 
all  speed  to  get  away,  and  they  were  now 
traversing  again  imder  vastly  different  cir- 
cumstances the  coimtry  over  which  they  had 
advanced  so  easily  and  so  triumphantly  two 
or  three  weeks  before.  There  seems  to  have 
been  particularly  desperate  fighting  at 
Suchodola  and  again  at  Krasnik,  where  two 
German  D  visions  appear  to  have  been  engaged, 
the  officers  of  which  afterwards  declared  that 
the  Austrians  broke  and  deserted  them.  At 
Frampol  there  is  record  of  a  brilliant  Russian 
cavalry  charge.  Thence  the  Austrian  left  was 
forced  back  into  the  morasses  about  Bilgoraj, 
while  the  right  and  centre  were  crowded 
together  as  they  neared  the  river  San.  By 
this  time  10,000  prisoners  had  been  sent  back 
to  Lublin  At  Frampol  one  Cossack  regiment 
is  said  to  have  captured  17  Austrian  officers, 
445  men,  and  many  horses  belonging  to  a  trans- 


COUNT    BOBRINSKY. 
Russian  Governor-General  of  Ga.icia. 

port  train.  At  a  point  below  Zamosc  one 
Russian  infantry  regiment  took  700  prisoners, 
including  many  officers.  One  Russian  subal- 
tern with  three  orderlies  is  said  to  have  taken 
80  prisoners,  and  a  spectator  spoke  of  the 
Austrians  as  "  siirrendering  in  companies  and 
battalions."  Among  the  booty  taken  here- 
abouts was  the  treasure  chest  of  the  17th 
Regiment  of  the  Landwehr,  containing  140.000 
crowns.  Such  details  give  an  idea  of  the  char- 
acter of  the  retreat,  on  which  the  Austrians 
are  said  to  have  suffered  badly  from  dysentery, 
as  was  shown  by  the  nuraber  of  patients  in 
the  hospitals  in  towns  which  were  occupied 
by  the  Russians. 

It  is  necessary  to  stop  here  for  a  while  in  the 
narrative,  because  contemporary  writers  on 
this  phase  of  the  campaign  developed  a  theory 
of  what  was  known  as  "  the  battle  of  tho 
Grodek  line."  It  was  declared  that  somewhere 
about  Bilgoraj  Dankl's  retreating'  army  got 
in  touch  with  von  Auffenberg's  left  and, 
uniting  with  it,  rallied  and  took  its  place  in 
the  northern  section  of  a  carefully  prepared 
line  of  defence  which  reached,  from  somewhere 
about  this  point,  through  Rawa-Raska  to 
Grodek  at  the  extreme  soutli.  It  was  asserted 
that  on  this  line  both  the  shattered  Austrian 
Ai'mies  pulled    themselves   together  and  again 


262 


THE    I'lMKS    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


A    RUSSIAN    SEARCHLIGHT. 

offered  a  firm  and  united  front  to  the  enemy. 
Against  them,  it  was  said,  the  whole  combined 
Russian  Armies  also  fell  into  line,  so  that  about 
2,500,000  men  confronted  each  other  and 
then  joined  battle  along  their  entire  .front. 
This  is  only  very  partially  true. 

While  von  AufTenberg's  Army  had  been  hold- 
ing the  position  before  Lemberg,  there  htul, 
indeed,  been  prepared  a  new  line  of  defence  in 
its  rear,  which  ran  from  Grodek  to  Rawn- 
Ruska,  and  thence,  apparently,  along  tiie  rail- 
way line  towards  Xarol.  It  was  a  fine  achiexc- 
ment  on  the  part  of  an  army  which  had  been 
handled  as  rouglil\-  as  tliis  had  been  to  pull 
itself  together  at  once  after  a  precipitate  fiiglit 
and  resolutelj'^  take  up  this  new  position. 
Very  probably,  also,  as  the  Russian  wedge 
driven  in  bet\\  een  the  two  armies  at  Tomaszow 
had  not  as  yet,  apparently,  penetrated  as  far 
as  Tarnogrod,  the  extreme  left  of  von  Auft'en- 
berg's  forces,  or  those  of  the  Archduke,  which 
prolonged  von  Auffenberg's  front  at  this  point, 
may  well  at  some  time  have  been  in  momentary 
touch  with  tiie  fringe  of  Dankl's  Anny  on  its 
way  to  the  San.  But  there  w  as  at  no  time  an\ 
definite  and  combined  stand.  The  gi'eat  mass 
of  Dankl's  Anny  fell  back  without  pavise, 
anxious  only  to  get  across  the  river.  None  tiie 
less,  the  "battle  of  the  Grodek  line,"'  even 
though  IJankl's  Army  must  be  excluded  from 
any  iJarticipation  in  it  (as  also  must   the    pm-- 


suing  Ru.s.sian  Army),  was  one  of  the  gieat 
episodes  of  the  campaign. 

We  do  not  know  the  extent  of  the  reinforce- 
ments which  had  been  sent  up  from  Au-stria 
or  what  the  "stiffening"  of  German  troops 
amounted  to.  According  to .  some  accounts, 
von  Auffenberg  had  no  fewer  than  ten  armv 
corps  under  him  around  Lemberg.  The  total 
losses  to  the  Austrian  Armies  by  this  time  must 
have  exceeded  200,000  men.  But  it  was 
jilso  said  that  additional  troops,  both  German 
and  Austrian,  from  Przemysl,  had  been  hurried 
up  after  the  fall  of  Lemberg  into  the  position 
at  Grodek,  and  that  the  troops  which  the 
Russians  met  there  were  largely  new  regiments 
w  hich  had  not  gone  tiirough  the  disheartening 
experiences  of  the  campaign.  It  may  well  be 
tliat  from  Grodek  to  Rawa-Ruska  and  beyond 
there  were  engaged  on  this  line  in  the  combined 
armies  on  both  sides  over  1,250,000  men.  The 
length  of  the  line  was  about  60  miles,  but  over 
much  of  this  distance  the  fighting  was  unimpor- 
tant, as  the  struggle  concentrated  more  and 
more  on  certain  crucial  points.  The  two  most 
critical  of  these  points  were  Grodek  on  the  ex- 
treme south,  where  the  Austrians  occupied 
a  position  of  great  strength,  and  Rawa-Ruska. 

The  Austrians  had  the  advantage  of  occu- 
pying positions  which,  if  hastily,  had  been 
efficiently  prepared  since,  and,  perhaps,  in 
anticipation  of  a  retreat,  before  the  battle  of 
Lemberg.  Their  right  at  Grodek  was  protected 
by  Nature  against  a  turning  movement,  and 
they  had  good  railway  commimications  in  their 
rear.  On  the  other  hand,  they  had  alreatly 
in  the  mass,  if  not  all  regiments  individually, 
been  defeated,  Axhile  the  Russians  were  con- 
fident and  flushed  with  victory.  On  the  whole 
front  the  Russians  also  appear  to  have  had  a 
numerical  superiority.  They  attacked  at  all 
points  with  the  same  conquering  impetuosity 
as  thej^  had  shown  since  the  beginning  of  the 
war. 

The  battle  was  joined  fii-st  round  the  positions 
at  Grodek,  into  which  the  Austrians  had 
retreated,  or  been  di-iven,  immediately  after 
the  captvu"e  of  Lemberg.  It  was  the  extreme 
north  of  the  line,  however,  which  first  began 
to  gi\e  %\ay.  The  Austrians  were  unable  to 
make  any  prolonged  stand  here,  where  the 
enemy,  besides  attacking  furiously  from  in 
front,  proceeded  to  envelop  their  left.  The 
fighting  here  went  on  confusedly  over  a  wide 
area.  Of  it  we  have  only  fi'aginentary  glimpsi^ 
of  scattered  units  strngglinc  in  a  broken  and 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


263 


uiarshj'  country,  ^^'e  know  that  at  several 
places  considerable  numbers  of  Austrian 
prisoners  were  taken,  and,  long  afterwards, 
the  Russians  were  finding  Austrian  guns  and 
batteries  entangled  in  the  swamps.  In  the 
result,  this  upper  part  of  the  AiLstrian  line  was 
steadily  forced  back,  fighting  desperately  as  it 
went,  until  the  whole  line  became  doubled  back 
on  itself  at  an  acute  angle  from  Rawa-Ruska. 
At  this  point  the  fighting  was  of  a  truly  terrific 
character. 

The  town  of  Rawa-Ruska  was  a  typical  small 
Galician  city,  chiefly  populated  by  Jews.  Most 
of  the  town  was  very  old,  but  a  modern  settle- 
ment had  grown  up  near  the  railway  station, 
for  Rawa-Ruska  was  one  of  the  important 
railway  centres  of  this  portion  of  Galicia.  Two 
lines  here  crossed  one  another,  one  running 
north-westerly  from  Lemberg  to  the  Polish 
frontier  at  Narol,  the  other  a  branch  of  the 
main  line  to  Cracow,  from  a  point  near  Jaroslau 
to  the  frontier  at  Sokal.  Big  railway  works 
and  round  houses,  besides  extensive  sidings 
and  storage  yards,  made  it  an  important 
centre  of  communication.  To  the  east  of  the 
town  a  number  of  low-lying  ridges  commanded 
the  approach  from  every  direction  except  the 


west.  Both  for  its  strategic  importance  and  its 
defensibility,  it  was  evidently  marked  out  as  a 
place  to  be  held  if  possible,  and  as  the  northern 
wing  of  the  Austrians  was  forced  back,  the 
fighting  here  became  more  and  more  acute. 

It  is  not  often  that  on  the  vast,  extended  front 
of  modern  battlefields  one  can  put  one's  finger 
on  any  point  and  say  :  "  Here  the  battle  was 
decided."  But  in  this  battle  of  the  Grodek  line 
Rawa-Ruska  was  such  a  point.  One  can  even 
pick  out  one  bit  of  land,  only  ten  acres,  which  was 
the  key  to  the  entire  position.  As  the  whole 
huge  battle  began  to  develop,  the  importance 
of  this  small  area  became  accentuated,  and  it  is 
probable  that  in  the  whole  war  there  was  no 
more  bitter  and  furious  fighting  waged  in  such 
a  small  area  as  occurred  around  Rawa-Ruska, 
and  especially  on  these  bloody  ten  acres. 

The  defences  on  the  point  of  the  angle  of  the 
Austrian  line,  just  behind  which  nestled  the 
little  Galician  city,  probably  did  not  have  a 
front  exceeding  six  or,  at  most,  eight  miles. 
Yet  we  are  told  that  for  eight  days  between 
250,000  and  300,000  men  fought  here  con- 
tinuously both  night  and  day.  After  two  days 
the  Russians  concentrated  on  the  angle,  the 
very  apex  of  the  whole,  which  had  its  point  on 


AUSTRIAN    TRENGHhS,    SHOWING    COVERED    SHELTERS    AND    TRAVERSES. 


2G4 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE    WAR. 


tlie  bluffs  at  the  edge  of  the  ten  acres.  What 
happened  there  was  hardly  less  to  the  credit  of 
the  Austrians  than  it  was  to  that  of  their 
victorious  enemy  In  view  of  the  rapidity  and 
comprehensiveness  of  the  Russian  successes  in 
Galicia,  there  had  been  a  tendency  everywhere 
to  decry  the  valour  of  the  Austrian  soldiery. 
The  Germans  seem  to  have  shared  this  view. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  whatever  shortcomings 
there  may  have  been  in  the  organization  or  the 
strategy  of  the  Austrian  Army,  there  was 
abundant  evidence  from  a  score  of  battlefields 
in  Galicia  that  the  men  fought  gallantly. 
Nowhere  was  the  evidence  more  convincing  than 
here  in  this  angle  at  Rawa-Ruska.  A  special 
correspondent  of  The  Times  inspected  the  battle- 
field very  shortly  afterwards,  and  described 
it  in  detail. 

For  eight  whole  days  the  Rvissian  infantry 
assaulted  and  stormed  against  the  heights  that 
defended  this  angle.  The  Austrians  in  a  single 
mile  made  stands  at  no  fewer  than  eight  distinct 
points.  Some  of  these  were  taken  and  retaken 
several  times  before  being  evacuated,  and  their 
evacuation  then  spelled  only  a  retreat  of  a  few 
hundred  yards  and  a  more  determined  resist- 
ance. There  is  one  incredible  position  which  the 
enemy  held  in  a  stubble  field  for  hours,  while  a 
better  position  was  being  dug  a  few  himdred 
yards   behind   in   a  small   dip   in  the   ground. 


For  a  mile  or  more  across  this  field  one  could 
trace  where  the  Austrian  line  had  lain,  for  there 
was  not  a  yard  unmarked  by  bloody  bandages, 
relics  of  equipment,  and  exploded  shell  frag- 
ments, while  so  thick  had  been  the  rain  of 
shrapnel  that  from  almost  every  clod  of  earth 
broken  in  the  hand  it  was  possible  to  sift  out  a 
few  of  the  little  leaden  balls.  The  reputation 
of  soldiers  who  could  Ue  in  that  hideous  place 
needs  no  defending. 

Two  or  three  hundred  yards  behind  this  line, 
just  over  a  small  swell  in  the  ground,  is  another 
line,  this  time  of  fairly  deep  trenches,  and  here 
the  Austrians  held  on  for  several  days.  At  one 
time  the  Russians  took  the  trench,  but  were  not 
strong  enough  for  the  moment  to  push  beyond 
it,  so  they  dug  themselves  in  on  their  side, 
only  to  be  dislodged  again  on  the  next  day  by 
the  Austrians.  So  one  saw  the  curious  sight  of 
a  ridge  of  earth  with  a  trench  on  each  side,  the 
one  filled  with  Russian  relics  and  the  other 
with  Austrian. 

Once  it  became  evident,  however,  that  this 
was  the  strategic  centre  of  the  whole  conflict, 
the  Russians  were  not  to  be  denied,  and  so,  day 
after  day  and  inch  by  inch,  they  drove  back 
the  Austrians  until  at  last  they  had  them  in  a 
deep  trench  on  the  slope  of  the  crest  of  the  final 
ridge  of  hills  defending  the  town  itself.  Just 
over  the  ridge  were  concentrated  the  Austrian 


SHELLPROOF    TRENCH. 


THE     TIMES    HISTOBY    OF     THE    WAR. 


265 


LEMBERG     MARKET. 


batteries.  Standing  on  the  gun  positions  one 
could,  with  a  pair  of  field  glasses,  pick  out 
distinctly  the  eight  lines  of  defence  which  the 
Austrians  tried  to  hold  and  the  Russians  had 
taken.  But  with  their  recoil  the  resistance  of 
the  blue-clad  soldiers  became  more  and  more 
desperately  stubborn.  The  last  trench  was  not 
above  400  yards  in  front  of  their  own  guns, 
and  the  Russians  seem  to  have  been  quite 
unable  to  make  any  headway  against  it  until 
they  brought  up  and  massed  a  number  of 
batteries  of  their  heavy  field  howitzers.  Then, 
deliberately,  in  a  patient  and  painstaking  way, 
they  proceeded  slowly  but  surely  to  destroy 
with  their  big  shells  the  entire  front  of  the 
Austrian  position.  It  was  possible  to  read  the 
evidence  of  this  operation  afterwards,  not  in 
the  trenches,  for  it  was  hard  to  see  where  they 
were,  but  in  the  unbroken  line  of  shell  holes, 
each  10  feet  across  and  5  feet  deep,  which 
extended  for  hundreds  of  yards  along  the 
former  Austrian  line.  A  man  could  walk  for 
nearly  half  a  mile  stepping  from  one  crater  to 
another,  while  the  ground  in  and  between  and 
all  around  was  strewn  with  shreds  and  patches 
of  blue  uniform,  with  fragments  of  equipment 
and  relics  of  humanity.  Here  a  clenched  hand, 
there  a  foot  sticking  out  of  a  boot,  and,  again. 


a  soldier's  overcoat  ripped  into  ribbons,  told 
what  sort  of  execution  the  Russians  howitzers 
did  when  once  they  came  into  action. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  it  all,  it  seems  that  the 
Austrians  stayed  on  here  for  above  a  day, 
when  at  last,  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet,  the 
Russians  carried  the  whole  crest  of  the  hill 
and  captured  the  few  gims  which  had  not 
already  been  put  oiit  of  action.  This  wiis  the 
decisive  moment  in  the  whole  great  confiict  on 
the  Grodek  line,  and  when  the  grey-clad 
soldiers  of  the  Tsar  swept  over  this  ridge  tlio 
issue  of  the  day  was  settled.  From  the  centre, 
in  those  bloody  ten  acres,  now  strewn  with 
dead  and  wounded  men  and  mangled  horses 
(for  an  effort  had  been  made  to  support  the 
position  with  mounted  infantry),  the  Russian 
wedge  spread  north  and  south,  and  by  nightfall 
the  Austrian  centre  was  broken  and  the  Rus- 
sians were  dropping  shells  into  the  outsldrts 
of  Rawa-Ruska.  Behind  the  shells  cauxe  the 
ardent  Russian  soldiers  with  such  promptness 
as  to  make  any  attempt  to  rally  and  hold  the 
town  itself  impossible.  According  to  the 
Russian  official  statement,  the  booty  captured 
at  Rawa-Rviska  included  30gims,  8,000  prisonei-s, 
and  "  enormous  stores  of  ammunition  and 
food." 


m\ 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


A    RUSSIAN    PATROL. 


Even  had  the  Austrians  been  able  to  hold 
Rawa-Ruska  against  the  direct  Russian  attack. 
however,  it  could  not  long  have  delayed  the 
inevitable  issue  of  the  great  battle.  Alreadx- 
events  were  shaping  themselves  on  the  southern 
end  of  the  line  in  such  a  way  that  the  position 
of  Rawa-Ruska  would  have  been  enveloped 
on  the  rear,  and  its  defenders  must  have  been 
surrounded  and  either  annihilated  or  captured. 

On  September  8  the  Russian  official  covi- 
miinique  announced  that  "  our  armies  attacked 
strongly  fortified  positions  at  Grodek." 
Apparently  these  attacks  began  as  early  as 
September  6,  when  the  Russian  northern  army 
was  engaged  in  driving  the  enemy  back  from 
Frampol  to  Bilgoraj.  The  defences  of  Grodek, 
including  the  position  at  Sadowa-Wisznia, 
were  reported  to  be  very  strong,  being  pro- 
tected by  a  series  of  six  connecting  lakes  and 
much  marshy  ground  cut  up  by  dykes.  The 
Russians  were  under  General  Brusiloff,  who 
repeated  here  the  tactics  of  massed  and  con- 
tinuous assault  with  which  he  had  overcome 
the  Austrian  resistance  at  Halicz.  The  Aus- 
trian position  was  on  a  cluster  of  wooded  hills, 
to  reach  which  the  Russians  had  to  cross  a 
plain  some  three  miles  wide  in  a  series  of 
parallels  under  machine  gun  and  rifle  fire.  It 
was  only  after  five  days'  fighting  that  they 
succeedea  in  attaining  a  position  from  which 
their  guns  could  effectively  reach  the  Austrian 
trenches.     These,    when    finally    cleared    witli 


the  bayonet,  were  found  to  be  almost  choktd 
with  dead  bodies.  Austrian  prisoners  declared 
that  they  had  had  no  regular  supplies  for  four 
days,  but  had  lived  on  wild  pears  and  raw 
potatoes  while  they  fought  from  the  trenches, 
the  living  lying  alongside  decaying  corpses, 
for  the  Russians  had  given  them  no  time,  night 
or  day,  in  which  to  bury  their  dead.  These  are 
all  the  details  which  we  have  of  what  must 
have  been  truly  terrible  fighting,  the  successful 
issue  of  which  was  communicated  to  the  world 
on  Septeinber  14  in  one  of  the  simply-worded 
and  restrained  annovmcements  in  which  the 
Russian  Headquarters  Staff  habitually  con- 
veyed the  news  of  most  momentovas  events  : 

The  army  of  General  Brusiloff,  againi^t  whom  the 
Austrians  made  their  last  desperate  onslaught,  has  on 
taking  the  offensive  captured  many  guns,  prisoners, 
and  artillery  parks,  the  numbers  of  which  are  now  being 
reckoned.  General  Brusiloff  testifies  that  his  troops 
displayed  the  highest  energy,  stanchness,  and  gallantry. 
The  corps  commanders  calmly  and  resolutely  directed 
their  troops  and  frequently  wrested  the  victory  at 
critical  moments.  General  Brusiloff  specially  mentions 
the  distinguished  services  of  General  Radko  Dmitrieff." 

From  the  references  to  the  "  desperate 
onslaughts "  of  the  enemy  and  to  "  critical 
moments  "  we  can  gather  something  of  the 
stubbornness  of  the  fighting  of  the  eight  days 
since  the  attack  on  Grodek  began.  In  a 
campaign  on  a  less  gigantic  scale,  less  crowded 
with  dreadful  and  sanguinary  incidents,  the 
carrying  of  the  defences  of  Grodek  would  have 
stood  out  as  an  event  of  the  first  importance.  It 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


267 


will  come  to  be  recognized  as  one  of  the  bril- 
liant and  critical  episodes  of  the  war.  At  the 
time,  on  the  day  following  the  vmassnming 
communication  quoted  above,  the  Grand 
Duke  Nicholas  merely  announced  that,  "  The 
Russians,  after  occupying  Grodek,  reached 
Mocziska,  and  are  now  within  one  march  of 
Przemysl." 

At  the  same  time,  while  Brusiloff's  centre 
was  "reaching  Mocziska"  (about  40  miles 
west  of  Lemberg),  his  left  was  pushing  south- 
westerly along  the  railway  line  to  Sambor,  arid 
on  to  ChjTow,  wliich  latter  place,  however,  was 
not  occupied  ixntil  September  24,  thus  isolating 
the  fortress  of  Przemysl  from  the  south. 
Brusiloff's  men,  when  Grodek  fell,  had  been 
fighting  and  marching  continuously  for  more 
than  three  weeks.  They  had  already  performed 
extraordinary  feats  of  endurance,  but  they 
hunted  the  flying  Austrians  from  Grodek  with 
the  same  pitiless  impetuosity  as  they  had  dis- 
played in  hunting  them  from  HaUcz. 

Meanwliile,  further  north,  as  we  have  seen, 
Rawa-Ruska  had  fallen.  Ruzsky  was  not,  any 
more  than  BrusUoff,  the  type  of  commander  to 
give  a  beaten  enemy  any  rest,  and  while  the 
latter  was  driving  the  Austrian  right  from 
Grodek  to  Chyrow  on  the  south  of  Przemysl, 
Ruzsky,  with  equal  vigour,  was  following  up 
his  success  and  sweeping  the  shattered  remnants 
of  the  army  which  had  opposed  him  along  the 
railway  towards  Sieniawa,  wliich  was  occupied 
on  the  same  day,  September  18,  as  Brusiloff 
captured  Sambor,  and  Jaroslau,  which  latter 
place  was  carried  ]:)y  assault  on  September  21. 


On  the  \A"aj-  there  was  heavy  fighting  aroimd 
Javorow,  15  miles  east  of  Przemysl,  when  the 
Russians  claimed  to  have  captiu-ed  5,000 
prisoners  and  30  gims.  Thus  Przemysl  was 
cut  off  on  the  east,  north,  and  south,  and  behind 
its  defences  the  remnants  of  von  Auffenberg's 
Army  took  refuge. 

Events  no  less  momentous,  and  equally 
disastrous  to  the  Austrian  arms,  had  also  been 
going  on  where  Danld's  Army  had  been  falling 
back  before  Generals  Ewarts  and  Plehve. 
We  have  seen  that  the  continuity  of  the  Aus- 
trian line  of  defence  had  not  been  made  good 
in  the  region  north-west  of  Rawa-Ruska, 
though  it  extended  beyond  the  frontier  between 
Tomaszow  and  Tarnogrod.  After  the  battle 
at  Tomaszow  the  line  of  the  Archduke  Joseph 
Ferdinand  above  Rawa-Ruska  to  that  point 
had  been  bent  back  on  to  the  Rawa-Ruska- 
Jaroslau  railway,  while  the  main  body  of 
Dankl's  Army  was  falling  back  to  the  line  of  the 
San.  The  Russian  pressure  on  its  rear  never 
relaxed.  That  pressure  was  particularly  severe 
from  the  Russian  right,  which,  after  clearing 
the  Opolie-Turobin  district,  had  fought  the 
battle   of   Krasnik.     The   greater   part    of   the 


AUSTRIAN    TEI.EGKAPH    CORPS. 


268 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


LOADING    A    RUSSIAN    GUN. 


Austrian  troops  crossed  the  San  close  to  its 
junction  with  the  Vistula,  and  they  must  have 
hoped  that  while  they,  on  the  other  side,  would 
be  in  touch  with  the  Austrian  railways,  the 
river  behind  them  would  form  a  barrier  against 
their  piirsviers.  But  the  operation  of  crossing 
was  to  cost  them  dearly. 

Foreseeing  the  necessity  of  falling  back 
across  the  San,  General  Dankl  had,  it  seems, 
been  sending  his  transport  back  in  advance 
of  his  retreat  almost  since  the  retirement  began. 
Some  of  the  transport  trains  had  been  seen  and 
shelled  from  the  left  bank  of  the  Vistula  as 
early  as  September  9.  It  was  not  until  Septem- 
ber 12  that  the  army  itself  reached  the  banks 
of  the  San.  While  the  main  body  and  the 
baggage  were  getting  across,  two  strong  rear- 
guards, to  north  and  east,  were  left  to  hold 
back  the  pursuing  Russians.  One  of  these  rear- 
guards had  its  left  protected  by  the  Vistula, 
the  other's  right  was  protected  by  the  San  ; 
the  two  forming  a  bow  or  arch  between  the  two 
streams.  Attack  on  their  front  was  made 
difficult  by  marshy  ground.  They  seem  to 
have  been  quite  unable,  however,  to  withstand 
the  Russian  assault,  which  pierced  the  screen 
long  before  the  crossing  of  the  river  was  com- 
pleted. An  immense  number  of  prisoners, 
said  to  have  been  30,000,  fell  into  the  Russian 
hands,  and  there  was  terrible  loss  of  life  as  the 


Russian  artillery  came  up  and  shelled  the 
bridges  over  which  the  Austrians  were  pressing 
in  solid  masses.  Besides  those  killed  by  shell 
fire,  many  are  said  to  have  been  forced  into 
the  river  and  drowned. 

Nor  did  the  Austrians  find  any  rest  on  the 
further  side  of  the  river.  In  theory,  the 
forcing  of  the  passage  of  the  San  by  an  army 
invading  Austria  should  have  been  an  almost 
impossible  task.  The  Austrians  had  spent 
immense  sums  of  money  in  the  endeavour  to 
make  it  so.  The  upper,  or  southern,  part  of 
its  course  was  protected  by  the  immensely 
strong  position  of  Przemysl  and  by  Jaroslau. 
Thence  a  light  railway,  built  purely  for  strategic 
purposes,  ran  parallel  and  close  to  it.s  left  bank 
almost  to  its  confluence  with  the  Vistula.  At 
various  places,  as  the  Austrians  fell  back,  they 
destroyed  the  bridges  behind  them.  Had  they 
destroyed  them  all,  the  1st  Army  would  have 
had  at  least  a  few  days'  rest.  But  the  Russians 
in  their  advance  were  too  swift.  By  a  brilliant 
stroke  they  rushed,  captured  and  made  good 
their  hold  on  the  bridge  at  Krzeszov,  on  the 
frontier  a  few  miles  west  of  Tarnogrod.  In 
the  words  of  an  official  communique  from 
Petrograd  "  the  Russian  soldiers  leaped  across 
the  river  on  the  very  shoulders  of  the  retreating 
enemy." 

This  victory  on  the  San,  with  the  crossing  of 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


i> 


the  river,  stands  out  as  one  of  the  conspicuous 
achievements  of  the  campaign.  What  the 
Austrian  losses  were,  in  addition  to  the  30,000 
prisoners  taken,  there  is  no  \\  ay  of  estimating, 
but  they  were  very  heavy.  What  Avas  more 
important  was  tliat  the  barrier  wliich  the 
Austrians  had  hoped  to  interpose  between 
themselves  and  their  ruthless  enemies  had  failed 
them.  Except  that  they  were  now  in  touch  with 
their  railways  and  within  reach  of  safetj'.  at 
least  for  the  moment,  under  the  shelter  of 
C'racow,  there  was  no  more  respite  for  the 
Austrians  within  the  "riverine  triangle" 
formed  by  the  Vistula  and  the  San  than  there 
liad  been  above  it.  Within  that  triangle  the 
Riissians  seized  a  prodigious  amount  of  war 
material,  supplies,  and  booty  of  all  kinds. 
With  the  dash  on  Krzeszov,  moreover,  the  last 
of  the  Austrian  armies  of  invasion  had  been 
driven  off  Russian  soil  in  this  quarter.  There 
was  no  longer  an  enemy  left  in  the  i'ro\inces 
of  VolhjTiia  or  Podolia. 

Nor  was  this  all.  ^Mention  has  been  made 
above  of  the  fact  that  Russian  troops,  based  on 
Iwangorod,  had  intercepted  German  reinforce- 
ments on  the  left  side  of  the  Vistula  as  the\^ 
hurried  across  Poland  to  the  lielp  of  Austria. 


From  that  side  of  the  river  Russian  gims  liad 
also  shelled  Austrian  transports  retreating  along 
the  right  bank.  As  the  Russian  right  pressed 
on  the  retiring  Austrians,  it  had  been  able  to 
spare  a  considerable  body  of  troops,  which  it  had 
thrown  across  the  Vistula  at  Josefow.  These 
troops,  reinforcing  the  Russian  force  already  on 
that  side  of  the  river,  had  s\Aept  southward 
parallel  to  the  advance  of  the  main  army  on  tlie 
right  bank,  brushing  aside  any  enemy  forces 
which  they  met,  effectually  preventing  any  help 
from  reaching  the  Austrians  from  that  quarter, 
and,  finally,  at  the  same  time  when  their  com- 
rades on  the  right  bank  were  delivering  the  final 
blow  to  the  Austrians  at  the  crossing  of  the  San, 
tliey,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  Vistula,  drove  a 
strong  Austrian  force  out  of,  and  occupied,  the 
important  place  of  Sandomierz.  Near  San- 
domierz  the  Russians  are  said  to  have  en- 
countered and  defeated  the  German  2nd 
Landwelir  Corps  under  General  Woirsch.  In 
and  around  the  town  tliej-  appear  to  have 
taken  3,000  prisoners  and  10  guns. 

This  advance  down  tiie  left  banlc  of  the 
\'istula,  with  the  occupation  of  Sandomierz,  is  a 
final  detail  illustrating  the  comprehensiveness 
of  the  Russian  strategy  and  the  precision  with 


ADVANCE    COSSACK     PATROL. 


27C 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


VIEW    FROM    OBSERVATION    STATION    ABOVE    HALIGZ. 


which  their  movements  worked  in  unison. 
It  will  be  well  to  stop  for  a  moment  in  the 
narrative  to  survey  the  course  of  events  during 
this  fateful  month. 

It  naust  be  remembered  that  Russia,  more 
or  less  incompletely  i^repared,  found  herself 
invaded  over  a  wide  front  by  armies  operating 
in  three  different  directions,  and  aggi'egating 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  one  million  n:ien. 
Her  soldiers  immediately  saw  and  seized  upon 
the  weak  point  in  the  enemy's  plans.  The 
farther  two  invading  armies  operating  on 
divergent  lines  penetrate  into  an  enemy's 
covintry  the  wider  must  they  become  separated, 
and  the  more  difficult  it  be  for  them  to  co- 
operate or  for  either  to  act  as  a  shield  to  the 
other's  flanks.  The  Russians  were  content, 
then,  to  allow  the  northern  1st  Austrian  Army 
to  press  on,  almost  unresisted,  to  within 
artillery  range  of  its  first  main  objective — 
LubUn  and  the  railway  line  to  Iwangorod  and 
Warsaw.  They  then  struck,  and  struck  with 
decisive  force,  at  the  weak  place  between  the 
two  armies  in  the  neighbourhood^of  Tomaszow. 
To  meet  this  tlirust  the  Austrians  were  com- 
pelled to  withdraw  their  reserve  troops  from 
the  extreme  left  across  the  rear  of  the  1st  Army. 
When  they  proved  insufficient,  a  new  army  was 
hastily  organized  and  thrown  into  the  gap.  It 
might  have  served  its  purpose  if  it  had  been 
pushed  forward  at  first  simviltaneously  with  the 
other    two    armies,    but    such     improvizations 


rarely  J  prosper  when  a  campaign  is  already 
well  advanced.  The  Russians  had  gathered 
strengtli,  and,  having  once  driven  their  wedge 
in  at  Tomaszow,  they  kept  it  there,  and  suc- 
ceeded in  widening  it  by  the  subsequent  opera- 
tions about  Bilgoraj  and  the  forcing  back  of  the 
Austrian  line  above  Rawa-Ruska.  The  1st 
Austrian  Army  was  thus  left,  at  tlie  extreme  of 
its  advance,  suspended  in  the  air. 

Meanwhile,  Brusiloff's  finely  conceived  and 
admirably  executed  turning  movement  along 
the  Dniester  on  the  extreme  south,  culminating 
in  the  blow  on  Halicz,  while  Ruzsky,  with  his 
main  force,  battered  at  the  Austrian  front  and 
left,  penned  in  von  Auffenberg's  Army  on  a  con- 
tinually contracting  front,  and  threw  it  back 
on  its  successive  lines  of  defence  in  the  Ztota 
Lipa,  before  Lemberg,  and  from  Grodek  to 
Rawa-Ruska.  Hurled  from  eacli  of  these  in 
turn,  with  the  Cossack  cavalry  ranging  wide 
over  Southern  Galicia  on  their  right,  the 
Austrians  had  no  choice  but  to  fall  back, 
guarding  their  rear  as  best  they  might,  west- 
ward towards  Cracow. 

As  soon  as  von  Auffenberg's  Army  was 
definitely  in  difficulties,  and  occupied  entirely 
with  considerations  of  its  own  safety,  the 
Russians  could  afford  to  give  attention  to 
Dankl's  Army  in  the  north.  No  help  could  now 
reach  it,  and  it  was  already  exhausted  with 
futile  efforts  to  break  the  rigid  barrier  which  had 
been   thrown   across   its   path.     The   Russians 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


•271 


rightly  massed  their  chief  strength  against  this 
aiTQy's  left,  for  if  that  wing  was  broken,  the 
whole  army,  heiTimed  in  on  both  sides,  must 
fall  back  or  submit  to  being  surrounded. 
Driven  from  Opolie  along  the  Vistula,  pitilessly 
hammered  along  its  whole  front,  threatened  and 
harried  on  its  right  flank  from  Tomaszow  and 
Tarnogrod,  we  have  seen  how  Dankl'sArmy 
was  hustled  down  to  and  across  the  San,  to 
And  no  rest  on  the  further  side. 

Every  chief  movement  on  the  Russian  side 
was  executed  with  the  same  certainty  of  touch, 
and  th^  operations  of  all  the  armies  synchro- 
nized to  perfection.  By  September  23  Ewarts 
and  Plehve  had  driven  Dankl's  Army  back  to 
the  line  of  the  Wisloka.  Riizsky  had  taken 
Jaroslau  on  September  21.  Brusiloff  was  in 
Chyrow  on  September  24. 

It  had  been  on  August  22  that  Ruzsky  had 
crossed  the  frontier  and  occupied  Brody,  while 
on  the  same  day  Brusiloff  had  also  entered 
Galicia  at  Woloczysk.  Beyond  doubt  the 
world  has  never  seen  a  month  of  such  gigantic 
fighting  as  had  taken  place  since  then.  The 
end  of  the  month  saw  all  the  Austrian  Armies, 
beaten  and  broken,  driven  in  from  north,  north- 
east, east,  and  south,  all  herded  into  the  con- 
fined region  west  of  Przemysl,  like  sheep  driven 
from  all  corners  of  a  field  into  one  narrow  pen, 
with  only  a  single  opening — the  railway  leading 
to  Cracow.  The  whole  scope  of  the  campaign 
can  be  clearly  followed  on  the  map  which  is 
given    on    page    260.     A    map    covering    the 


A    COSSACK    SCOUT    REPORTING    TO 
HIS    COMMANDING    OFFICER. 

larger   theatre,    including   Berlin   and    Vienna, 
has  been  published  on  page  220, 

As  early  as  September  17  a  Russian  official 
statement  put  the  Austrian  losses,  since  the 
taking  of  Lemberg,  at  250,000  killed  and 
wounded,  and  100,000  prisoners,  with  400  gims, 
many  colours,  and  a  "  vast  quantity  of  stores." 
Again,  we  hear  that   the  rifles  captured  num 


BRIDGE    OVER    THE    DNIESTER    DESTROYED    BY    THE    AUSTRIANS 

DURING    THEIR    RETREAT. 


27:2 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


THE    ARCHDUKE    JOSEPH    FERDINAND. 

bered  nearly  half  a  million.  What  the  total 
losses  on  the  Austrian  side  were  in  the  whole 
campaign  there  is  no  way  of  Icnowing.  In  ail 
they  probably  put  into  the  field,  including  the 
later  reinforcements,  both  Austrian  and  Ger- 
man, about  1,100,000  to  1,200,000  men.  It  is 
difhcult  to  believe  that  they  lost,  in  killed, 
wounded,  and  prisoners,  less  than  500,000  of 
these.  Official  Russian  estimates  placed  the 
enemy's  total  losses  at  from  35  to  50  per  cent, 
of  liis  total  forces.  The  Russian  losses  were 
heavy  at  times,  but  it  is  believed  that  in  the 
whole  campaign  they  did  not  reach  50,000. 
And  the  Russians  were  now  masters  of  all 
Eastern  Galicia,  in  possession  of  Lemberg  and 
Jaroslau,  of  Brody,  Busk,  Grodek,  Tarnopol, 
Sambor,  Brzezany,  and  many  other  towns  of 
importance,  with  all  the  railway  system  operat- 
ing between  them.  They  controlled  the  GaU- 
cian  oil-fields,  of  great  importance  to  the 
enemy  at  such  a  time,  and  aU  the  agricultural 
output  of  the  rich  Galician  plains.  Russian 
cavalry  was  already  feeling  at  the  approach  to 
the  Carpathians,  from  the  Dulila  Pass  to  the 
Bukowina.     Przeniysl  alone  held  out. 

This  war  was  an  extraordinary  solvent  of  the 
reputations  of  fortresses.  In  this  campaign 
we  have  seen  how  naturally  strong  positions, 
with  effective  defensive  works,  like  Grodek  and 
Rawa-Ruska,  held  out  gallantly  for  some  time, 
and   were   then   carried   by   assault.     Lemberg 


had  been  reputed  to  be  strong.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  tlie  defences  of  the  city  itself  were  insig- 
nificant, and  when  the  army  shielding  it  «as 
l)rok(>n.  no  attempt  was  made  to  hold  it.  But 
the  fall  of  Jaro-ilau  has  never  been  explained. 
Jaroslau  was  reputed  to  be  stronger  than  eitlier 
Liege  or  Namur.  It  had  been  confidently  ex- 
pected to  offer  a  i)rolongcd  and  stubborn  resist- 
ance. The  whole  defences  of  the  San  were  very 
strong.  They  collapsed  with  hardly  any  de- 
fence, and  Jaroslau  itself  only  witlistood  attack 
for  two  days.  When  the  Russians  brought 
their  hea\ier  guns  to  bear  on  the  fortifications, 
it  seems  that  the  garrison  simply  deserted  their 
posts  and  fled,  showing  how  demoralized  tlie 
Austrian  Armies  had  become  under  tlieir  suc- 
cessive catastrophes.  Przemysl  alone  of  tlie 
Austrian  fortified  places  justified  its  reputation. 

Besides  its  strength  as  a  fortress,  Przemysl 
was  a  beautiful  town,  a  veritable  garden  city, 
set  around  with  orchards  and  flower  gardens. 
It  had  a  stormy  history  reaching  back  into  the 
mists  of  the  tenth  century.  In  the  town  and 
its  environs  in  191-4  there  was  a  civil  popula- 
tion of  about  50,000,  chiefly  Poles  and  Ruthenes, 
who  lived  together  m  great  amity  and  with 
perfect  religious  toleration.  In  September  of 
that  year,  when  the  victorious  Russian  advance 
swept  all  resistance  before  it,  there  was  said,  in 
official  reports  from  Vienna,  to  be  an  army  of 
80,000  men  based  on  Przemysl.  under  com- 
mand of  General  Boveerig.  He,  with  a  large 
part  of  this  army,  seems  to  have  moved  to  tlie 
line  of  the  Wisloka  to  help  Dankl's  demoralized 
forces  to  make  their  stand  on  that  stream. 
Probably  many  of  von  Auf^enberg's  troops,  as 
they  retreated,  were  used  to  form  the  garrison 
of  the  fortress^;  which  was  vmderstood  at  the 
beginning  of  the  investment  to  contain  about 
100,000  men,  the  defence  being  in  the  hands 
of  General  Kusmanek.  Later,  this  garrison 
appears  to  have  been  increased. 

We  have  already  seen  how  the  railwaj^  com- 
munication with  Przemysl  had  been  severed  on 
the  south  and  east  by  the  Russian  advance 
after  the  fall  of  Grodek  and  the  occupation  of 
]\Iocziska  and  Chyrow.  The  fall  of  Jaroslau  and 
the  occupation  of  Rad>^nno,  a  town  on  the 
main  Cracow  railway,  on  the  left  bank  of  the 
San,  some  eight  miles  east  of  Jaroslau.  and 
15  miles  north  of  Przemysl,  completed  the 
isolation  of  the  fortress.  The  stream  of  flight 
and  pursuit  flowed  past,  lapping  round 
Przemysl  on  all  sides,  leaving  it  an  islet  in  the 
middle  of  a  flood.     So  it  stood,  except  for  one 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


273 


short  interval,  when  the  tide  was  torced  back, 
and  for  a  while  Przemysl  was  again  in  com- 
munication with  Cracow,  throughout  the 
following  winter  until  spring,  for  more  than 
half  a  year. 

In  those  intoxicating  days  of  September,  1914, 
the  Russians  took  it  for  granted  that  the  lonely 
stronghold  must  soon  fall  to  them.  The  news- 
papers, not  of  Russia,  but  of  all  the  Allies,  told 
the  world  that  its  fate  was  sealed.  But  stores 
of  aU  kinds  had  been  poured  into  it,  and  all  pre- 
parations made  for  a  long  resistance.  It  was 
announced  that  it  had  provisions  enough  to 
last  until  May,  1915,  and  in  General  Kusn\anek 
it  had  a  commander  who  had  no  inclination  to 
surrender.  The  first  investment  was  made 
complete  by  September  2G  or  27,  1914.  The 
Russians  immediately  called  on  the  fortress  to 
surrender.  General  Kusmanek  replied  that  he 
would  not  even  discuss  surrender  until  all  the 
powers  of  resistance  had  been  exhausted.  An 
effort  was  made  to  carry  the  place  by  storm, 
but  it  was  a  costly  experiment,  and  the  Russians 
gave  up  the  attempt  and  settled  down  to  a 
regular  investment  until  such  time  as  heavy 
siege  grnis  could  be  brougiit  up  and  tlie  way 
prepared  for  an  assault. 

In  the  following  month,  as  will  be  shown  in 
'a  later  chajDter,  the  renewed  Austro-German 
offensive  on  this  front  forced  the  Russians  back 
to  a  point  where,  it  the  pressure  on  the  fortress 
was  not  entirely  removed,  the  western  forts  were 
disengaged,  and  there  was  unrestricted  com- 
munication with  Cracow.  It  is  probable  that 
at  this  time  extra  forces  were  thrown  into  the 


RUSSIAN    SHELTERS    IN    THE 
TRENCHES. 


fortress.  The  Austro-German  tide  again  re- 
ceded towards  the  end  of  November,  1914,  and 
from  that  time  onwards  the  investment  of  the 
fortress  was  complete  and  more  stringent  than 
before.  The  besieging  force  was  in  command 
of  General  Ivanoff.  The  heavy  siege  guns, 
however,  were  not  brought  up  for  some  time. 
They  are  said  to  have  been  ready  at  the  be- 
^^inning  of  the  New  Year,  but  determined 
attempts  were  then  being  made  to  relieve  the 
fortress  from  the  direction  of  the  Carpathians, 


I 


PRZEMYSL. 


274 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAH. 


GENERAL    VON    KJjSMANEK, 

In   command  of  the  fortress  of  Przemysl. 

and  it  was  decided  to  \\  ait  until  the  danger  had 
passed,  lest  the  gunji  and  siege  material,  diffi- 
cult of  transport,  should  be  captured.  Real 
bombardment,  then,  did  not  begin  until  early 
in  March,  1915. 

During  the  progress  of  the  siege  the  garrison 
made  many  gallant  sorties,  but  without 
material  results.  Towards  tlie  middle  of  March 
the  heights  dominating  the  eastern  sector  of 
the  position   fell   into  Russian  hands,   and  on 


the  night  of  the  13th  the  important  positions 
at  Mackiowice  on  tlie  north  were  carried  by 
an  assault  in  the  darkness.  There  followed  a 
desperate  sortie,  led  by  General  Kusmanek  him- 
self, at  the  head  gf  the  23rd  division  of  the 
Honved,  wliich  was  beaten  back  with  a  loss  of 
over  4,000  prisoners,  and  many  killed  and 
wounded,  and  the  forts  on  the  western  side  fell 
into  Russian  liands.  This  was  the  end  ;  for 
it  seems  that  the  garrison  and  civil  population 
alike  were  on  the  verge  of  starvation. 

It  was  stated  that  the  defenders  in  these  last 
days  deliberately  used  up  all  their  ammunition  l)y 
reckless  firing.  They  destroyed  their  guns  and 
had  already  eaten  all  the  horses.  A  final 
but  fruitless  sortie  had  been  made  on  March  20 
in  the  direction  of  Oikovice.  Early  on  the 
following  morning  loud  explosions  were  heard 
from  different  parts  of  the  fortress,  where 
the  Austrians  were  blowing  up  the  work.s 
preparatory  to  surrender.  At  six  o'clock  that 
morning,  INIarch  21,  1915,  the  place  was  sur- 
rendered tmconditionally.  According  to  the 
official  lists  furnished  to  the  victors  by  General 
Kusmanek,  the  girrison  captiu-ed  with  the 
fortress  included  9  Generals,  93  superior 
officers,  2,500  subalterns  and  officials,  and 
117,000  rank  and  file.  The  town  of  Przemysl 
was  not  injured,  all  the  damage  being  confined 
to  the  fortifications  and  the  outskirts. 


ARCHDUKE    CHARLES    FRANCIS    JOSEPH    (in    the    centre)    VISITING     THE 

FORTRESS    OF    PRZEMYSL. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAE. 


275 


AUSTRIAN     OFFICERS     IN     BESIEGED     PRZEMYSL 


The  event  was  celebrated  l)y  a  grand  Te 
Deum  at  the  headquarters  of  the  Russian 
Commander-in-chief,  at  which  the  Tsar  and 
the  Grand  Duke  Nicholas  were  present.  The 
Second  Class  of  the  Order  of  St.  George  was  con- 
ferred upon  the  Grand  Duke,  and  the  Third 
Class  upon  General  Ivanoff.  The  tenacity  with 
which  the  Russians  had  clung  to  the  siege 
through  all  the  fluctuating  fortunes  of  the  war 
during  the  long  winter,  though  reports  from 
German  sources  declared  that  it  had  cost  them 
70,000  men  previous  to  the  beginning  of  the 
bombardment,  and  the  frequent  and  deter- 
mined efforts  made  by  the  Austrians  and 
Germans  to  relieve  the  fortress,  showed  how 
much  importance  was  attached  to  its  possession 
by  both  sides.  Its  fall  seems  to  have  come  as  a 
shock  to  Germany.  A  day  or  two  before,  the 
German  Press  had  been  loudly  proclaiming  its 
invincibility.  In  Russia  the  news  was  received 
with  great  rejoicing,  and  everywhere  it  was 
recognized  that  the  captiu"o  of  the  fortress 
profoundly  modified  the  whole  situation. 

This  narrative  of  the  fate  of  Przemj'sl,  how- 
ever, takes  us  far  ahead  of  the  general  course  of 
events.  The  first  Galician  campaign  may  bo 
said  to  have  ended  with  the  complete  and 
disastrous  failure  of  the  Austrian  invasion. 
Przemysl  was  still  holding  out,  but  all  Eastern 


Galicia — Sanak,  Sambor,  Stryj,  Stanislau — wtus 
in  the  hands  of  the  Russians.  The  Austrian 
field  armies  had  all  fallen  behind  the  line  of  the 
Wisloka,  where  von  Auf^enberg  had  his  base  at 
Tarlow,  with  Dankl  and  the  remnants  of  hia 
broken  army  on  his  left.  At  this  moment 
German  aeroplanes  were  scattering  proclama- 
tions along  the  East  Prussian  frontier  whicli 
said  : 

Soldiers  !  On  the  Austrian  frontier  the  Russian 
Army  lias  been  routed  and  is  retreating;.  Many  Russian 
soldiers  have  been  lett  on  the  battlefield.  In  Poland 
there  is  sedition,  and  in  Moscow  and  Odessa  there  is 
revolution  which  will  speedily  extend  to  the  whole  of 
Russia.  In  order  to  prevent  you  from  surrendering, 
your  authorities  tell  you  that  we  torture  Russian 
prisoners.  Do  not  believe  this  calumny,  for  where 
would  be  found  executioners  to  kill  tiio  hundred  thousand 
army  of  Russian  prisoners  ?  Your  prisoners  arc  now 
peacefully  living  within  oiu-  country,  together  with 
French,  Belgians,  and  English.  They  are  very  content. 
It  is  not  worth  while  to  die  for  a  lost  cause.  Live  for 
your  wives  and  children,  your  native  land,  and  a  new  and 
liappy  Russia. 

But  in  Vienna  other  tales  were  circulated. 
There  it  was  stated  that  one  Austrian  General 
had  been  tried  by  court-martial  and  shot,  and 
another  had  been  removed  from  the  command 
of  a  cavalry  division  which  had  been  almost 
annihilated,  and  had  shot  himself. 

The  immediate  importance  of  (ho  Hiissiuii 
victories  was,  perhaps,  at  first  overostiiuattxl. 
There  was  talk  in  the  Press  of  tiio  imiurdiate 


•276 


TBE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAll. 


capture  of  Cracow  and  overleaping  of  the  Car- 
pathians, of  the  roads  to  Berhn  and  Vienna 
being  now  open,  of  the  elimination  of  Austria 
as  a  serious  factor  in  the  war,  and  the  proba- 
bility of  her  concluding  a  separate  peace. 

None  the  less,  the  results  of  the  campaign 
were  of  the  utmost  value.  In  itself  it  was  on 
such  a  scale — not  less  than  2,500,000  fighting 
men  being  engaged  in  it  from  first  to  last — and 
its  battles  were  so  gigantic  and  accompanied 
with  such  terrible  slaughter  that  the  campaign, 
judged  by  any  standards  in  liistor3%  ought  to 
raiik  as  one  of  the  greatest  of  wars  of  all  time. 
In  comparison  with  the  battles  of  Lemberg, 
Grodek,  Rawa-Ruska,  Tomaszow,  and  others, 
most  of  the  famous  battles  of  liistory  were 
trifling  things.  And  the  Russian  success  was 
brilliant  and  overwhelming.  If  Austria  was 
not,  indeed,  eliminated,  she  had  received  a 
staggering  blow,  and  worse  than  the  blow  to 
Austria  was  the  blow  to  the  whole  Austro- 
Gennan  theory  of  the  war.  It  showed,  as  was 
being  shown  also  on  the  East  Prussian  front, 
that  the  Russian  military  power  was  a  real 
and  terrible  thing.  It  showed  how  complete 
the  miscalculations  as  to  Russia's  uiu-eadiness 
and  unwieldiness  had  been.  It  showed  the 
folly  of  all  the  German  expectations  of  risings 
in  Poland,  or  of  any  other  form  of  dissension 
among  the  Russian  peoples.  It  showed  that, 
besides  her  fighting  milhons,  Riissia  had 
generals     of     first-class     strategic     ability.     It 


showed  that  all  hope  of  a  speedy  "  smashing  " 
of  Russia  with  one  hand  was  as  illusory  as  the 
same  hope  had  proved  in  regard  to  France  on 
the  western  front.  We  have  seen  that  Germany 
had  already  been  giving  some  actual  support 
in  men,  albeit  a  useless  one,  to  the  Austrian 
Armies  in  their  difficulties.  From  now  on,  liow- 
ever,  she  became  much  more  the  predominant 
partner  in  the  alliance  than  had  heretofore 
been  the  case.  It  will  be  sliown  in  another 
chapter  how  Germany  assumed  the  direct 
control,  not  only  of  the  joint  operations, 
but  of  the  individual  Austrian  and  Hungarian 
forces,  to  the  bitter  humiliation  of  the  pride 
of  the  Austro -Hungarian  peoples. 

Certain  aspects  of  the  campaign  and  the 
inferences  therefrom  deserve  especial  treat- 
ment, especialh-  the  light  which  it  tlirew  on 
the  quality  and  characteristics  of  the  Russian 
soldier.  The  history  of  the  Russian  Army,  tl:e 
story  of  its  reorganization,  and  an  account  of  its 
composition  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war  ha\  e 
been  given  in  detaU  in  Chapters  XXVIII.  and 
XXIX.  of  this  History.  Accompanying  those 
chapters  will  be  found  many  illustrations,  in- 
cluding portraits  of  Russian  Generals,  wiiich  it 
\\  ill  be  profitable  to  look  at  again  in  connexion 
with  the  narrative  of  the  events  with  which  we 
have  just  been  dealing.  ^lention  has  also  been 
made  of  the  miscalculations  which  Germany 
and  Austria  made  in  regard  to  Russia's  readi- 
ness for  war.     Their  misunderstanding  of  the 


RUSSIAN    ARTILLERY. 
The  new  field  gun. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OE     THE    WAE.- 


'Ill 


A    STREET    SCENE    IN    PHZEMYSL. 


Russian  soldier  was  no  less  remarkable  :  it  was 
on  a  par  with  the  view  of  Sir  John  French's 
"  contemptible  little  army." 

The  outbreak  of  the  war  produced  no  more 
remarkable  phenomenon  in  any  country  than 
the  conversion,  as  it  were  overnight,  of  the 
entire  Russian  people  into  a  nation  of  total 
abstainers.  The  day  after  war  was  declared, 
■every  vodka  shop  in  the  Empire  was  closed  by 
Imperial  Decree  during  the  time  of  mobilization. 
Subsequently  the  prohibition  was  extended  for 
the  whole  diu-ation  of  the  war.  In  Russia's  cold 
•climate  the  use  of  strong  drinlis  by  all  classes 
of  the  people  had  generally  been  regarded  as 
more  or  less  a  matter  of  necessity.  In  one  day 
its  use  was  stopped,  and  the  whole  population 
accepted  the  decision  without  complaint.  It 
was  only  one  manifestation  of  the  extraordinary 
spirit  of  earnestness,  almost  of  consecration, 
with  which  the  Russian  peoples  entered  upon 
the  war. 

The  Russian  peoples  had  been  known  to  be 
possessed  of  inunense  patience  and  powers  of 
endurance.  In  the  mass  they  were  inured  to 
hard  living  and  accustomed  to  scanty  fare. 
They  are  fundamentally  by  temperament  a  pro 


foundly  religious  people.  But  the  fashionable 
view  of  them  throughout  Germany  and  Austria, 
encouraged  by  many  who  must  have  known 
better,  was  that  they  were  uncivilized  bar- 
barians, heavy-witted  and  incapable  of  dis- 
cipline, and  of  ferocious  and  savage  passion. 
The  word  Cossack,  in  particvilar,  was  a  thing 
to  frighten  babies  with.  The  contrast  of  all 
this  with  the  actual  behaviour  of  the  Russian 
Armies  in  the  field  was  absurd. 

The  abstention  from  liquor  probably  con- 
tributed not  a  little  to  the  powers  of  endiu-ance 
of  the  Russian  troops.  Certainly  they  were 
remarkable.  Very  seldom  have  soldiers  had  to 
endiu-e  harder  and  more  continuous  work  than 
was  called  for  from  the  soldiers  of  the  Tsar  in 
the  course  of  those  four  terrible  weeks.  Eye- 
witnesses testified  to  the  fortitude  which  they 
displayed  under  all  conditions  of  the  campaign 
and  when  wounded,  and  to  the  uncomplaining 
cheerfulness  with  which  they  confronted  every 
task.  On  the  day  after  a  desperate  engagement . 
in  which  it  had  lost  a  large  proportion  of  its 
numbers,  a  regiment  would  bo  singing  as  it 
marched  along  the  road.  Nor  up  to  tlie  last 
did  the  troops  lose  their  dash.     Fresh  men  of 


278 


■THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


any  army  could  not  have  attacked  with  more 
impetuosity  than  did  Bru.silort".s  at  Halicz 
after  an  advance  of  the  most  arduous  descrip- 
tion, Ruzsky's  at  Rawa-Ruska,  or  the  men  of 
the  northern  army  at  the  crossing  of  the  San. 

The  Cossacks,  especially,  enjoyed  before  the 
war  a  n^ost  evil  rejjutation.  It  has  been  men- 
tioned in  a  former  chapter  that,  in  the  cam- 
paign in  East  Prussia,  the  testimony  of  German 
authorities  was  that  in  towns  which  they  cap- 
tured, the  behaviour  of  the  Cossacks  v\as 
"  exemplary  and  irreproachable."  The  evi- 
dence from  Galicia  is  to  the  same  effect.  Those 
who  know  the  Cossack  will,  indeed,  know  that 
he  is,  as  a  rule,  if  high-spirited,  very  childish 
and-  essentiall}''  good-natured.  At  Halicz,  if 
ever,  the  fighting  spirit  of  the  Russians  rnust 
surely  have  been  aroused,  and  we  have  testi- 
mony from  independent  sotirces  of  what 
happened  there.  The  Russian  van  which, 
after  the  Austrian  defeat,  pushed  first  through 
Halicz  and  across  the  river  in  ptirsuit  of  the 
enemy,  was  apparently  composed  of  three 
divisions  of  Cossack  cavalry.  Here  v\as  an 
occasion,  then,  when  one  might  have  expected 
the  worst,  when,  after  a  bloody  action,  the 
victorious  troops  swept  tlirough  a  defenceless 
country  full  of  Jews,  and  offering  every  tempta- 
tion to  excesses.     The  valle-s'  itself  is  a  garden 


(illed  to  overIl(n\i)ig  with  all  the  good  things 
that  a  rich  and  fertile  agricultural  country 
affords.  So  far  from  its  having  been  pltuidered 
or  devastated  after  the  Russian  advance  had 
passed  on,  the  fields  were  full  of  shocks  of  grain, 
in  every  garden  there  were  chickens  and  ducks 
and  huge  white  geese,  and  fat  swine  wandered 
about  the  streets  of  the  town.  On  the  outskirts 
of  the  town  every  acre  seemed  to  be  the  grazing 
groiuid  of  happy  and  contented  cattle.  In 
the  town  itself  there  was  not  a  single  destroyed 
house,  while  at  the  settlement  aroimd  the  rail- 
road station  only  a  few  buildings,  such  as  ware- 
houses, had  been  demolished  by  the  Russian 
artillery  in  the  effort  to  keep  the  retiring  enemy 
on  the  move. 

Still  more  significant  was  an  incident  which 
occiuTed  at  the  neighbouring  town  of  Botzonce. 
It  has  been  told  how  the  retiring  Austrians 
attempted  here  to  make  a  stand,  and  were 
shelled  out  by  the  Russian  guns  which  pressed 
after  them.  The  whole  centre  of  the  town 
was  reduced  to  ruins,  except  tliree  buildings. 
The  two  churches  and  the  Town  Hall,  which 
had  a  chiu'ch-like  spire,  and  was  evidently 
mistaken  by  the  Russians  for  a  third  place  of 
worship,  stood  alone  undamaged  among  the 
wreckage.  It  was  impossible  to  believe  that 
this  had  been  the  result  of  chance.   The  Russian 


BOHEMIAN     DRAGOONS. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAB. 


279 


THE    VICTORY    OF    LEMBERG— CELEBRATIONS    IN    PETROGRAD. 


gunners  had  obviously  endeavoured  to  spare  the 
religions  bmldings,  and  to  confine  their  fire  to 
the  streets  and  buildings  of  which  the  military 
necessity  of  the  moment  demanded  the  destruc- 
tion. Similarly,  in  other  towns  which  the 
Russians  were  compelled  to  shell,  it  was  always 
the  region  of  warehouses,  depots,  station-build- 
ings and  the  like  which  was  attacked,  while  the 
himibler  sections  occupied  by  the  poorer 
classes  were  spared. 

It  was,  of  course,  not  to  the  interest  of  the 
Russians  to  Ul-use  the  people  of  Galicia.  They 
came  not  to  oppress  or  spoU,  but  as  deliverers. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  operations,  when 
Russia  first  assumed  a  general  offensive  on 
August  17,  the  Grand  Duke  Nicholas  had 
issued  the  following  appeal  to  the  Russian 
inhabitants  of  Galicia  : 

Brothers. — A  judgment  of  God  is  being  wrought. 
With  Christian  patience  and  self-annihilation  the  Russian 
people  of  Galicia  languished  for  centuries  under  a  foreign 
yoke,  but  neither  flattery  nor  persecutions  could  break 
in  it  the  hope  of  liberty.  As  the  tempestuous  torrent 
breaks  the  rocks  to  join  the  sea,  so  there  exists  no  force 
which  can  arrest  the  Russian  people  in  its  onrush  towards 
unification.  Let  there  be  no  longer  a  subjugated 
Russia.  Let  the  country  which  forms  the  heritage 
of  Saint  Vladimir  throw  off  the  foreign  yoke  and  raise 
the  banner  of  united  Russia,  an  iiidivisihlr-  land.      May 


the  providence  of  God  who  has  blessed  the  work  of  the 
great  uniters  of  the  Russian  lands  be  made  manifest. 
May  God  aid  His  anointed,  the  Emperor  Nicholas  of 
All  the  Russias,  to  complete  the  work  begun  by  the 
Grand  Duke  Ivan  Kalita. 

Rise,  fraternal  Galician  Russia,  who  have  suffered  so 
much,  to  meet  the  Russian  Army  for  you  and  your 
brethren,  who  will  be  delivered.  Room  will  be  fovind 
for  you  in  the  bosom  of  our  mother  Russia  withovit 
offending  peaceable  people  of  whatever  nationality. 
Raise  your  sword  against  the  enemy  and  your  hearts 
towards  God  with  a  prayer  for  Russia  and  the  Russian 
Tsar! 

It  is  impossible  that  a  conquering  army  can 
pass  through  a  vanquished  country  without 
the  perpetration  of  some  individual  excesses. 
But  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  throughout  the 
Galician  campaign  the  behaviour  of  tiie  Russian 
troops  was  extraordinarily  good. 

Nor  did  the  Austrians  make  am-  attempt 
to  emulate  the  examples  of  the  doctrine  of 
"  frightfulness "  given  by  their  allies  in  Bel- 
gium. In  Galicia,  of  course,  thej-  v.ere  in 
their  own  comitry.  As  they  penetrated 
north  into  Russia,  being  in  happy  mood  and 
meeting  with  little  opposition,  tliey  seem  to 
have  done  small  wanton  damage.  On  its  retreat, 
however,  Daniel's  Army  laid  waste  a  large  jiart 
of  the  province  of  Volhynia,  ravaginy  tlic 
country   and  burning   villages  and   farnvsleads 


280 


THl'J    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


AUSTRIAN    MOTOR    CYCLISTS. 


as  they  pii.^sed.  In  a  measure  this  was  doubt- 
less dictated  by  supposed  miUtary  considerations, 
in  the  hope  of  delaying  the  enemy  in  his  pur- 
suit. When  a  soldiery,  however,  is  started  on 
the  work  of  destruction  in  an  enemy's  country, 
it  is  inevitable  that  many  things  should  be 
done  which  neither  military  exigency  nor  any- 
thing else  can  excuse.     It  can  only  have  been, 


also,  a  complete  relaxation  of  discipline  in  the- 
beaten  and  demoralized  Austrian  Armies  whic  l> 
pennitted  the  pillaging  which  went  on  in  some 
of  the  larger  towns,  even  in  Galicia,  as  Sieni- 
awa.  As  a  whole,  however,  the  campaign 
appears,  on  both  sides,  to  have  been  con- 
ducted towards  the  civilian  population  witl> 
moderation  and  humanity. 


CHAPTER    LVIII. 

THE   PROBLEM  OF  EGYPT: 
A  NEW  REGIME. 


The  British  Occupation — Defensive  Measures  of  the  Egyptian  Government — Factors  of 
Discontent  —  The  Khedive  and  the  Extrejie  Nationalists  —  German  and  Turkish 
Intrigues — Remedial  Measures,  Econojuc,  Political,  and  Military — Measures  against 
Enemy  Subjects  and  Shipping — War  with  Turkey — jNIartial  Law  in  Egypt — British 
Protectorate  Proclaimed — Abbas  Hilmi  Deposed — Sultan  Hussein  of  Egypt — Character 
and  Accession — The  Sudan — Naval  Operations  in  the  Red  Sea  till  the  End  of  1914 — 
The  Action  at  Bir  en  Nuss. 


IT  is  in  the  pages  of  Lord  Cromer's  "  Modern 
Egypt  "  and  Lord  Milner's  "  England  in 
Egypt  "  that  the  fascinating  but  complex 
history  of  the  British  occupation  of  Egypt 
can  best  be  studied.  To  describe  it  and  the 
events  that  led  up  to  it  in  brief  were  an  impos- 
sible task.  It  is,  however,  necessary  to  preface 
this  account  of  recent  events  in  Egypt  by  a 
short  sketch  of  the  principal  features  of  the 
history  of  the  country  since  1882.  Only  thus  is 
it  possible  to  understand  the  relations  between 
tlie  British  and  Egyptian  Govermnents  which 
had  a  vital  bearing  on  the  developments  in 
Egj'pt  after  the  outbreak  of  the  Great  "\^"ar. 

Great  Britain  had  been  opposed  to  the  con- 
struction of  the  Suez  Canal,  ^hich  opened  a  new 
and  shorter  route  to  India  to  tlie  Mediterranean 
Powers.  Its  completion  made  the  fate  of  Egypt 
largely  dependent  on  the  will  of  tlie  leading 
Sea  Power.  In  1875  Lord  Beaconsfield  pur- 
chased 176,602  original  founders'  shares  in  the 
Suez  Canal  from  the  embarrassed  Khedive,  or 
Prince,  of  EgjqDt,  Lsinail  Pasha.  England  thus 
acquired  a  definite  stake  in  tiie  country  and 
was  bound  to  intervene  both  in  the  management 
of  the  Canal  and  in  tlie  organization  of  Egyptian 
Vol.  III.— Part  34. 


finance.  Ismail  Pasha  was  deposed  by  his 
Suzerain,  the  Sultan  of  Turkey,  in  1879.  He 
left  an  empty  Treasury  and  an  insubordinate 
army  behind  him.  Anarchy  ensued  under  his 
successor  Tewfik,  culminating  in  a  military 
mutiny,  inspired  partly  by  real  grievances 
against  foreign  usurers  and  corrupt  officials, 
partly  by  fanaticism,  and  largely  by  the  native 
Egyptian  officers'  jealousy  of  their  Turkish  and 
Circassian  superiors.  Great  Britain  intervened 
on  behalf  of  the  Khedive  and  restored  order  at 
Tel-el-Kebir  in  1882.  Owing  to  the  national 
dislilcc  for  the  responsibilities  which  such  action 
would  have  involved  she  did  not  proclaim  a 
protectorate  over  Egypt,  There  were,  indeed, 
several  occasions  on  which  her  statesmen  con- 
templated the  withdrawal  of  the  Army  of 
Occupation,  but  after  the  failure  of  the  Anglo- 
Tiurkish  negotiations  of  1886-1887  it  was 
recognized  that  this  could  only  be  effected,  if 
at  all,  after  many  years. 

In  spite  of  the  jealousy  of  France,  whose 
jioliticians  had  allowed  themselves  to  be 
mananivred  into  an  attitude  of  hostility 
towards  England  by  Germany,  the  hostilitj' 
of    reactionarv  elements    and    of  the  Khodive 


281 


9R2 


TIIJ':    riMFS    HISTOHY    OF    THE    WAR. 


[From  a paintinS  by  the  Hon,  John  Collier, 

SIR    HENRY    MCMAHON, 
High  Commissioner  for  Egypt. 

Abbas  II.,  who  succeeded  his  father  Tewftk  in 
1892,  the  financial  bondage  in  which  Egypt 
Avas  held  by  international  jealoiisies,  the  abuse 
of  the  Capitulations,  and  the  fact  that  none  of 
the  Great  Powers  had  definitely  recognized  our 
special  position  and  interests  in  Egj'pt,  our 
influence  increased  and  Egypt  prospered  more 
and  more  under  the  masterful  hand '  of  Lord 
Cromer,  British  Agent  and  Consul-General  at 
Cairo.  In  1898  the  Sudan,  which  had  rebelled 
under  a  religious  impostor  in  1882  and  had  been 
for  sixteen  years  a  prey  to  bloodshed  and 
anarchy,  was  reconquered  by  an  Anglo -Egyptian 
Army  under  Lord  (then  Sir  Herbert)  Kitchener 
and  placed  under  an  Anglo -Egyi^tian  condo- 
minium. A  French  attempt  to  effect  a  lodgment 
on  the  Upper  Nile  failed.  Six  years  later  came 
the  Anglo -French  agreement  of  happy  augury, 
by  which  France,  in  return  for  concessions  in 
Morocco  and  elsewhere,  recognized  England's 
special  interests  in  Egj-pt,  while  England 
iindertook  to  make  no  change  in  the  political 
status  of  the  country.  The  other  European 
Powers,  except,  of  course,  Turkey,  some  sooner, 
some  later,  recognized  the  occupation. 

Henceforth,  instead  of  France,  more  or  less 
energetically    supported    by    Russia,     it     was 


Turkey,  encouraged  later  by  the  German  Em- 
piic,  that  challenged  Great  Britain's  political 
predominance  in  Egypt.  The  Porto  had  not 
recognized  the  occupation,  had  protested 
against  the  declaration  of  an  Anglo -Egyptian 
condoininium  over  the  Sudan,  and  had  since 
1887  maintained  a  "Special  ^Mission"  at  Cairo, 
which  was  never  recognized  by  the  Britisli 
authorities,  who  held  that  the  Sultan's  official 
representative  in  Egypt  was  the  Khedive,  but 
was.  nevertheless,  able  at  times  to  exert  its 
influence  unfavourably  to  us. 

Egypt,  it  must  be  remembered,  A^a.s  a  part  of 
the  Ottoman  Empire.  By  the  Firman  of  1879 
the  Khedive  possessed  certain  essential  attri- 
butes of  sovereignty,  subject  to  the  pajnuent  of 
a  tribute  of  abo\it  £075,000.  The  Khediviate 
was  hereditary  in  the  House  of  IVIohamed  Ali 
according  to  the  law  of  primogeniture.  But 
the  same  Firman  debarred  the  Khedive  from 
the  right  of  raising  loans  without  the  consent 
of  the  Sultan  and  of  keeping  up  an  army  of  over 
18.000  men  in  time  of  peace,  nor  could  he 
conclude  any  treaty  beyond  certain  commercial 
conventions  with  any  foreign  Power.  At  the 
Sublime  Porte  Egypt  was  regarded  as  an 
autonomous  Ottoman  province  ruled  by  an 
hereditary  Governor -General  appointed  by  the 
Sultan,  though  possessed  of  greater  indepen- 
dence than  other  Ottoman  "  Valis." 

In  1906  the  Tm-ks,  who  had  taken  care  never 
to  agree  to  the  usual  defimtion  of  the  frontiers 
of  Egypt,  attempted  to  occupy  certain  points 
in  the  Sinai  Peninsula,  from  Avhich  tliey  only 
retired  when  the  British  Ambassador  had 
presented  an  ultimatiun  to  the  Porte.  The 
eastern  frontier  between  Egypt  and  Turkey 
was  then  delimited,  but  the  frontier  convention 
between  the  two  countries  was  never  ratified 
by  the  Porte.  In  1907  Lord  Cromer  retii-ed, 
owing  to  ill-health,  from  the  post  of  British 
Diplomatic  Agent  and  Consul-General,  which 
he  had  held  with  honour  since  1883.  He 
had  found  Egypt  banknipt ;  he  left  it  solvent. 
He  found  the  Egyptian  fellaheen,  as  the 
peasantry  are  called,  oppressed  and  poor  ;  he 
left  them  prosperous  and  secured  against  the 
gi'osser  forms  of  injustice.  His  name  will  be 
for  ever  linked  with  the  history  of  the  revival 
of  Egyptian  prosperity  and  civilization.  His 
departure  took  place  at  a  time  when  the 
excitement  aroused  by  the  frontier  dispute 
with  Turkey  had  not  died  down,  and  the 
lOiedive  and  the  Nationalists  of  the  extreme 
party  were  violently  hostile. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OE    THE    WAR. 


•28B 


Before  j^roceeding  with  this  narrative  it  is 
necessary  to  say  a  few  words  concerning  tlie 
relations  between  the  British  Government  and 
the  Khedive  and  his  Ministers. 

"  I  hardly  need  point  out,"  wrote  Lord 
Granville  in  1884,  "  that  in  important  questions 
where  the  administration  and  safety  of  Egypt 
are  at  stake,  it  is  indispensable  that  Her 
Majesty's  Government  should,  so  long  as  the 
provisional  occupation  of  the  country  by 
English  troops  continues,  be  assured  that  the 
advice  which,  after  full  consideration  of  the 
views  of  the  Egyptian  Government, .they  may 
feel  it  their  duty  to  tender  to  the  Khedive 
should  be  followed.  It  should  be  made  clear 
to  the  Egyptian  Ministers  and  Governors  of 
Provinces  that  the  responsibility  which  for  the 
time  rests  on  England  obliges  Her  Majesty's 
Government  to  insist  on  the  adoption  of  the 
policy  which  they  recommend,  and  that  it  will 
be  necessary  that  those  Ministers  and  Governors 
who  do  not  follow  this  course  should  cease  to 
hold  their  offices."  Since  1895  the  relations 
between  Ministers  and  their  British  advisers 
had  grown  steadily  more  cordial,  but  complete 
harmony  between  the  British  and  Egyptian 
sides  of  the  Administration  had  been  frequently 
prevented  by  the  action  of  the  Khedive,  who, 
though  unwilling,  after  a  couple  of  severe 
lessons,  to  place  himself  in  open  opposition  to 
Gre^it  Britain,  never  ceased  for  long  to  intrigue 
against    the    British    and    to    undermine    the 


authority  of  his  own  Ministers.  Sir  Eldon 
Gorst,  succeeding  Lord  Cromer  in  1907,  doubt- 
less with  instructions  to  avoid  friction  and 
"  incidents,"  attempted  a  policy  of  conciliation 
which  did  not  meet  with  the  success  which  it 
deserved.  He  nevertheless  was  able  tempo- 
rarily to  detach  the  Khedive  from  the  extremist 
Nationalist  Party  and  to  cvirb  the  license  of 
the  extremist  Press.  Dm-ing  his  tenure  of 
office  the  Christian  Premier,  Butros  Pasha 
Ghali,  was  assassinated  by  an  extremist 
student,  who  would  seem  to  have  been  in  touch 
with  the  Committee  of  Union  and  Progress. 
After  the  sadly  prematvire  death  of  Sir  Eldon 
Gorst,  Lord  Kitchener  was  appointed  in  his 
stead.  His  prestige  as  a  stern  soldier  and  his 
knowledge  of  Egypt  enabled  him  rapidly  to 
calm  the  local  agitation  of  which  the  mvu-der 
of  Butros  Pasha  had  been  a  sign.  The  ex- 
tremist Nationalists  lost  ground  or  fled  to 
Turkey,  but  the  KJiedive  and  the  Ottoman 
Special  Mission  continued  their  intrigues. 
Sedition  was,  however,  scotched,  though  not 
killed,  and  Lord  Kitchener  by  his  lavish 
expenditvu-e  on  improvements  and  by  legisla- 
tion on  behalf  of  the  fellaheen  acqviired  great 
popularity.* 

When  war  broke  out  in  Europe  Egypt  was 
therefore    quiet.     The    Moslem    peasants,  who 

*  A  full  account  of  Lord  Kitchener's  work  in  Egypt 
has  been  given  in  Chapter  XIX.,  together  with  portraits 
of  Lords  Kitchener  and  Cromer  and  Sir  R.  Wingate. 


THE    OLD    WORLD    AND    THE    NEW. 
Australian  Imperial   Force  near  the  Sphinx  and  Pyramids. 


284 


THE    TIMK!^    HTSiTORY    OF    THE     WAB. 


SIR    GEORGE    REID    ADDRESSING     AUSTRALIAN 


formed  the  enormous  majority  of  the  popula- 
tion, appreciated  the  benefits  of  the  occupation, 
and  had  no  knowledge  of  and  less  liking  for 
Germans,  while  their  memories  of  Turkish  rule 
were  unpleasant.  But  they  lacked  initiative, 
and  were  largely  imeducated,  so  that  whatever 
support  they  were  disposed  to  give  the  British 
authorities  in  times  of  trouble  was  likely,  to  be 
platonic.  Among  the  better  educated  classes 
in  the  towns  there  was  little  love  for  the  Khe- 
dive and  little  fanaticism  against  Europeans, 
though  Syrian  and  Coptic  Christians  were 
generally  disliked.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
numerically  small  but  vocal  extremist  party, 
which  comprised  not  a  few  students  of  law  and 
theology  and  some  of  the  Turco-Egyptians, 
who  formed  a  sort  of  aristocracy  since  the  days 
of  Mohamed  Ali,  was  hostile  and  had  become 
more  reactionary  in  its  tendencies  since  it  had 
begun  to  look  to  Turkey  for  support  rather  than 
to  France.  The  great  majority  of  officials, 
merchants,  and  landowners  supported  the 
occupation,  which  was,  of  course,  anathema 
to  the  much  less  numerous  entourage  of  the 
Khedive.  The  excitability,  credulity,  and 
fickleness  of  the  urban  lower  classes,  failings 
which  extended  to  many  of  the  half-educated 
intelligenzia,  made  them  imreliable  as  sup- 
porters of  any  Government.  The  Arabic 
proverb,  "  The  Egyptian  has.  fears,  but  has  no 
respect,"  is  too  often  true  of  this  element. 
Religion  was  the  side  on  which  this  town 
population    was    most    easily    approached    by 


intriguers,  and  it  is  noteworthy  that  the 
connexion  between  Egj-pt  and  Turkey  was 
popular  among  them  and  among  some  of  the 
fellaheen  for  reUgious  reasons.  The  Turkish 
Sultanate  meant  nothing  to  them,  but  to  be. 
if  only  nominally,  "  under  the  protection  of  the 
Khalifate  "  flattered  their  amour-propre  and 
was,  so  to  speak,  a  sort  of  guarantee  of  religious 
orthodoxy. 

On  August  2  the  Council  of  Ministers  declared 
the  notes  of  the  National  Bank  of  Egj-pt 
obligatory  legal  tender.  On  the  same  day  it 
prohibited  the  exportation  of  foodstuffs.  On 
August  3  the  Egyptian  Government,  in  view  of 
the  outbreak  of  war  between  Austria-Hungary 
and  Serbia  and  between  Russia  and  Germany, 
i  isued  instructions  similar  to  those  issued 
during  the  Russo-Japanese  War,  to  its  authori- 
ties on  the  Suez  Canal  and  its  ports  of  access 
and  at  other  Egyptian  ports.  But  witliin 
forty-eight  hours  the  situation  had  entii'ely 
changed  owing  to  the  entry  of  Great  Britain 
into  the  war.  On  August  5  the  Council  of 
Ministers  met  and  arrived  at  an  important 
"  decision  tending  to  ensure  the  defence  of 
Egypt  in  the  war  between  Germany  and  Great 
Britain."     The  preamble  ran  : 

Considering  that  war  has  unhappily  been  declared 
between  His  Majesty  the  King  of  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland  and  of  the  British  Dependencies  oxer  Seas, 
Emperor  of  India,  and  the  German  Emperor  ;  that  the 
presence  in  Egypt  of  the  Army  of  Occupation  of  His 
Britannic  Majesty  rentiers  the  country  liable  to  attack 
by  His  Majesty's  enemies  ;  that  in  consequence  of  this 
state  of  affairs  it  is  necessary  that  all  measures  be  taken 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAB. 


285 


TROOPS     AT    MENA    CAMP. 


to  defend  the  country  against  tlie  risk  of  such  attack — 
all  whom  it  concerns  are  therefore  informed  that  at  a 
meeting  of  the  Council  of  Ministers  held  on  August  5, 
1914  under  the  presidency  of  H.E.  the  Regent,  the 
following  decisions  were  taken. 

The  first  four  articles  of  the  Egyptian 
Goveriunent's  decision  forbade  any  person 
residing  in  or  passing  through  Egypt  (1)  to 
make  any  contract  or  agreement  whatever  with 
the  German  Government  or  any  of  its  agents  ; 
(2)  to  contribute  to  or  participate  in  the  issue 
of  any  loan  to  the  German  Government  or  make 
any  loan  thereto  ;  (3)  to  conclude  any  policy  or 
contract  of  insurance  with  or  for  the  benefit  of  any 
person  residing  in  or  passing  through  the  German 
Empire,  or  effect  any  paJ^nent  on  the  basis  of 
any  existing  policy  or  contract  of  insurance  on 
account  of  any  loss  due  to  warlike  acts  by  the 
forcjes  of  His  Britannic  Majesty  or  of  his  Allies  ; 
(4)  to  conclude  any  new  contract  or  enter  into 
any  new  commercial,  financial  or  other  obliga- 
tion with  or  for  the  benefit  of  any  person  as 
defined  in  (3).  Article  5  prohibited  any  Egyptian 
vessel  from  entering  into  or  conmiunicating 
with  any  German  port.  Article  6  forbade  the 
export  of  arms  and  munitions  of  war,  military 
equipment  and  vehicles,  petrol,  benzine,  air- 
craft, coal-sacks,  coal  and  briquettes.  The 
next  two  articles  forbade  the  export  of  any  mer- 
chandize from  any  Egyptian  to  any  German 
port  and  the  transhipment  in  any  Egyptian  port 
of  any  merchandii(;e  for  the  above  destination, 
and  prohibited  the  departure  from  any  Egyptian 
port  of  vessels  which  had  not  been  specially 


authorized  to  sail.  Articles  9  to  11  dealt  with 
contraband.  By  their  terms  any  neutral  vessel 
which  was  in  itself  contraband  of  war  in  accord- 
ance with  the  definition  of  contraband  adopted 
by  the  British  Government,  or  carried  contra- 
band or  rendered  any  services  contrary  to 
neutrality  "  to  the  enemy,"  would  be  prevented 
from  leaving  Egj-ptian  jjorts  ;  any  neutral  vessel 
embarking  contraband  of  war  in  any  Egyptian 
port  would  be  liable  to  capture,  and  any  neutral 
vessel  on  which  contraband  had  been  embarked 
before  the  date  of  the  Eg5'ptian  Govermnent's 
decision  must  unload  the  contraband  cargo,  if 
still  in  an  Egyptian  port.  Article  12  forbade 
the  discharging  in  any  Egyptian  port  of  any 
article  or  merchandize  taken  on  board  in  a 
German  port  subsequently  to  the  Egyptian 
Government's  decision.  The  next  four  articles 
are  given  in  full  : 

Article  13. — The  Naval  and  Military  forces  of  Hifl 
Britannic  Majesty  may  exercise  all  the  rights  of  war  in 
Egyptian  ports  and  in  Egyptian  territory,  and  war- 
vessels,  merchant  vessels  or  merchandize  captured  in 
Egyptian  ports  or  territory  may  be  brought  before  the 
judgment  of  a  British  Prize  Court. 

Article  14. — Under  the  strict  observation  of  the  pro- 
ceding  clauses  any  German  vessel  which  was  in  an 
JOgyptian  port  at  the  date  of  the  opening  of  hostilities  or 
which,  having  quitted  its  last  port  before  that  date,  haa 
entered  or  shall  enter  an  Egyptian  port  without  know- 
lodge  of  the  outbreak  of  war,  will  bo  authorized  until 
sunset  on  August  14,  1914,  to  load  or  unload  and  to 
leave  port  on  giving  such  written  engagements  as  may 
be  required  by  the  British  naval  authorities  in  con- 
formity with  tlie  dispositions  of  Chapter  3  of  iho  Conven- 
tion of  1907  relative  to  certain  restrictions  in  the  exercise 
of  the  right  of  capture  in  naval  warfare. 

Article  15. — German  merchant  vessels  which  have  left 

34—2 


28G 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


".jeam- 


«C-. 


HELIOPOLIS    GAMP. 


their  last  port  before  the  declaration  of  war,  and  which 
put  in  witliout  knowledge  of  the  declaration  of  war  to 
an  Egyptian  port  after  sunset  on  August  14,  1914,  and 
are  authorized  to  enter  port,  may  be  required  to  leave 
immediately,  or  after  the  delay  deemed  necessary  by 
the  port  authorities  for  the  discharging  of  such  part  of 
their  cargo  as  they  may  be  required  or  specially  authorized 
to  effect,  in  each  case  giving  in  advance  the  written 
engagements  referred  to  in  the  preceding  article. 

Article  16. — A  ship  liable  to  the  operation  of  any  of 
the  preceding  articles,  having  cargo  on  board  which, 
according  to  the  rules  applied  by  the  British  Prize  Courts, 
constitutes  enemy  cargo,  or  which  the  British  naval  or 
military  authorities  wish  to  requisition  subject  to 
compensation  (moyennant  compensation)  for  the  needs 
of  the  war,  shall  not  leave  port  till  this  cargo  shall  have 
been  discharged. 

Under  Article  17  cable  ships,  ocean  oil -tank 
vessels,  ships  of  over  5,000  tons  displacement  and 
14  knots  speed,  or  merchantmen  obviously  con- 
structed with  a  view  to  their  use  as  ships  of  war 
were  expressly  deprived  of  any  of  the  benefits 
referred  to  in  Clauses  14  and  15. 

Article  18  ran: — "All  persons  whom  tliis 
concerns  shall  render  the  assistance  which  may 
te  required  of  them  to  the  naval  and  military 
forces  of  His  Britannic  Majesty."  Article  19 
Extended  the  operation  of  the  Goverimient's 
•decisions  to  companies,  associations,  etc.,  having 
a'  legal  or  de  facto  existence.  Article  20  dealt 
as  follows  with  the  Canal  ports  : 

As  regards  the  ports  of  access  to  the  Suez  Canal,  the 

present    decision    shall    be    applied    with    the    following 

modifications  : 

■■■  (a)  Merchant  vessels  which  have  traversed  or  wish 
to.  traverse  the  Canal,  whatever  their  nationality  or 
cargo,  shall  have  full  liberty  to  enter  or  leave  the 
ports  of  access  or  to  pass  through  the  Canal  without 
risk  of  capture  or  detention,  provided  that  the  passage 
of  the  Canal  and  departure  from  the  port  of  access  arc 

"  Effected  normally  and  without  unjustifiable  delay. 


(6)  These  ships  may  receive  such  provisions,  in- 
cluding coal,  as  shall  be  reasonably  necessary  for  the 
voyage  on  which  they  are  bound. 

(c)  Merchandize  of  all  sorts  which  has  passed  the 
Canal  may  be  transhipped  at  the  port  of  departure. 

(d)  Article  13  of  the  present  decision  shall  be  inter- 
preted in  accordance  with  the  Suez  Canal  Convention 
of  1888. 

On  August  13  the  above  decisions  were 
extended  to  Austria -Hungary,  then  at  wa*  with 
Great  Britain,  the  date  of  August  22,  1914, 
being  substituted  for  that  of  Augtist  14  in  the 
application  of  Articles  14  and  15  to  Austro- 
Hungarian  merchant  vessels. 

These  decisions  had  been  prepared  before- 
hand, in  view  of  the  possible  outbreak  of  a 
European  war,  by  Mr.  W.  E.  Briuiyate,  C.]\I.G., 
Legal  Adviser  to  the  Egyptian  Government, 
under  the  ausjaices  of  the  Imperial  Defence 
Committee.  They  could  not  be  described  as  a 
declaration  of  neutrality.  They  formed,  indeed, 
something  resembling  a  Treaty  of  Alliance  of 
local  and  limited  application  between  Egyjjt 
and  Great  Britain  and  her  Allies.  Egypt,  being 
in  the  military  occupation  of  the  British  Forces, 
was  exposed  to  attack  by  the  enemies  of  tliose 
forces,  and,  therefore,  took  the  necessary 
nteasures  against  such  attack.  Against  the 
argument  that  Egypt  as  a  vassal  State  of 
Turkey  had  no  right  to  take  any  such  steps  the 
Egyptian  Government  could  urge  the  plea  of 
military  justification,  the  naore  so  as  her  action 
harmed  no  neutral  State  whatsoever. 

Thanks  to  the  Allies'  command  of  the 
Mediterranean,  Egypt  had  nothing  to  fear 
from  naval  raiders  as  soon  as  the  Goeben  and 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAE. 


287 


Breslau  had  disappeared  into  the  Dardanelles. 
But  the  attitude  of  Turkey  now  became 
provocative,  while  the  Germans  resident  in  the 
country,  the  supporters  of  the  Khedive,  and  the 
pro-Turk  party  required  watching.  Had  the 
war  caused  Egypt  no  economic  distress,  their 
efforts  to  excite  popular  feeling  against  the 
occupation  need  have  aroused  no  uneasiness. 
Unfortunately  Egypt  suffered  severely  from 
the  war.  The  country  lived  on  its  cotton 
crop.  The  larger  landowners,  some  of  whom 
had  already  been  hard  hit  by  the  financial 
crisis  of  1907,  the  consequence  of  over-specula- 
tion in  land,  the  effects  of  which  were  still  felt, 
were  not  as  a  rule  thrifty.  They  were  in  the 
habit  of  obtaining  annually  large  advances 
against  the  coming  cotton  crop  from  the  banks, 
and  of  spending  these  advances  lavishly.  The 
great  mass  of  small  landowners,  if  thriftier, 
were  still  too  fond  of  spending  sums  they  could 
ill  afford  on  marriage  feasts  and  similar  festivi- 
ties. ]Many  of  them  were  more  or  less  heavily 
in  debt,  while  those  who  hoarded  would  only 
part  with  their  money  at  the  last  extremity. 
To  the  landowners  in  general  the  war  was  a 
heavy  blow  ;  all  means  of  financing  the  culti- 
vators to  enable  them  to  lift  and  pick  the  crop 
were  checked,  the  banks  being  unable  to  make 
the  usual  advances  on  cotton,  and  the  general 


indebtedness  of  the  native  population  conse- 
quently increased.  The  landowners  had  been 
looking  forward  to  a  big  cotton  crop  and  hoping 
to  realize  it  at  satisfactory  prices.  The  crop, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  was,  generally  speaking, 
inferior  in  quality  to  the  last,  and  the  quantity 
was  less  than  had  been  expected,  owing  to  the 
ravages  of  the  latest  Egyptian  insect  pest,  the 
"  pink  boll-worm."  Owing  to  the  absence  of 
facilities  for  financing  the  cultivators,  the  ripe 
crop  was  often  left  unpicked  for  so  long  that 
the  first,  second,  and  third  pickings  were  taken 
together,  to  the  detriment  of  yield  and  quality. 
There  were  cases,  too,  in  which  the  disheartened 
tenant  farmers  refused  to  pick,  knowing  that 
as  soon  as  they  had  gathered  in  the  crop  it 
would  be  seized  by  the  landlord  for  rent.  In 
the  early  months  of  the  war,  therefore,  the 
anxiety  and  depression  of  the  peasantry  were 
great. 

Trade  natm-ally  suffered.  At  the  beginning 
of  the  war  there  was  a  short  spurt  in  certain 
branches  owing  to  the  sudden  replenishment  of 
stocks.  Complete  stagnation  followed  for  some 
time.  Native  industries  suffered  the  most, 
and  unemployment  increased.  The  Public 
Works  Ministry  was  compelled  from  motives 
of  economy  to  cease  work  on  all  its  various 
projects,  except    where    it    was    necessary  im- 


BRITISH    SENTRIES    ON    DU  lY    AT    THE    CITADEL.   CAIRO. 
In  the  background  Is  the  Musque  of  Mohamed  All. 


288 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


-TT^»^C*  . 


^i-^^c^-V/-    --ffi^. 


K 


V 


«.  fir 


'ti^ 


TROOPS    AT    RIFLE    PRACTICE    ON    THE    DESERT   SANDS. 


mediately   to  spend  money  to  conserve   work 
that  had  already  been  done. 

The  departm-e  of  a  large  nmnber  of  European 
residents — Frencli,  German,  and  Austro-Hun- 
garian — called  out  for  military  service,  affected 
the  shopkeeping  class  and  don:iestic  servants, 
as  did  the  general  reduction  of  private  expen- 
diture all  round.  The  retiu-ns  of  imports  and 
exports  up  to  December  14  were  eloquent  of 
the  economic  loss  sustained  by  the  country'  : 

Value    of    imports    into    Egypt 

from  1.8.13  to  31.10.13        ...  £E. 7, 338.000 

Ditto  from  1.S.14  to  31.10.14...  3,357,000 
Value  of  exports  from  1.8.13  to 

31.10.13           7,106,000 

Ditto  from  1.8.14  to  31.10.14  ...  1,583.000 

Previous  crises  had  merely  affected  a  section  of 
t  lie  population — stockbrokers,  speculators,  and 
owners  of  certain  urban  or  suburban  proper- 
ties for  the  most  part.  The  present  crisis 
affected  all  classes,  and  caused  a  very  general 
rnalaise,  more  especially  among  the  very  poor. 
The  risk  that  sedition-mongers  would  attempt 
to  stir  up  trouble  among  the  ignorant  and 
needy  had  to  be  taken  into  account.  Hostile 
intrigue  from  four  different  quarters — the 
Kliedive  and  his  supporters,  the  extremist 
Nationalists,  German  agents,  and  Tiu'lcish 
agitators — had  never  entirely  ceased,  and  was 
the  more  to  be  feared  now  that  economic 
conditions  were  imsatisfactory. 

The  Khedive  was  unpopular,  but  an  Oriental 
ruler   can  generally   rely   on  some  support  as 


long  as  he  is  on  the  tnrone,  and  Abbas  Hilmi» 
as  the  lawful  sovereign  of  Egj^pt,  had  his 
followers  and  even  his  admirers.  Lord  Cromer's 
"  Abbas  II."  contains  an  interesting  sketeh  of 
his  earlier  struggles  with  the  yoimg  ruler  of 
Egypt,  who,  fresh  from  the  narrow  training  of 
the  Teresianum  at  Vienna,  ignorant  of  Egj-ptian 
conditions,  and  impulsive,  made  a  series  of 
rash  "  frontal  attacks  "  on  the  British  Occu- 
pation, and  was  repulsed  with  considerable 
loss  to  his  prestige.  Thereafter  the  Khedive 
waged  a  war  of  intrigue  against  Great  Britain 
in  Egj'pt.  He  did  much  to  create  the  ex- 
tremist Nationalist  party,  wliich  he  financed 
from  the  proceeds  of  the  sale  of  grades  and 
decorations,  often  to  eminently  mideserving 
persons.  His  entourage  was  a  stronghold  of 
anti-British  feeling.  Officers  and  officials  who 
had  misconducted  themselves  and  had  been 
dismissed  from  Govermnent  emplojinent  often 
fotuid  an  asylum  in  liis  service.  Corrupt 
ex-officials  of  tlie  Ministry  of  Finance  were 
particularly  eligible.  For  long  he  held  the 
Wakfs  (Pious  Fotmdations)  Admim'stration 
in  liis  hands,  and  added  to  liis  private  fortime 
therefrom.  His  ambition  was,  .as  Lord 
Cromer  has  written,  '"  to  enrich  himself 
by  every  possible  means  in  his  power." 
His  principal  interest  and  amusement  was 
political  and  financial  intrigue.  Lord  Cromer 
has  compared  him  to  the  Virgilian  Dares, 
"  seditione  potens  " — mighty  in  sedition.  To 
such  of    his  Ministers  \\ho   displeased  liim   or 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE    WAR. 


289 


pleased  the  British  he  could  on  occasion  show 
the  maximum  of  discourtesy. 

After  Lord  Cromer's  retirement  came  a  brief 
reconciliation  between  the  occupation,  in  the 
person  of  Sir  Eldon  Gorst,  and  Abbas  Hilmi. 
The  Khedive  did  not,  it  was  true,  abandon  liis 
sale  of  decorations  or  his  hunt  for  "  Naboth's 
vineyards,"  but  liis  intrigues  against  the 
occupation  became  temporarily  less  energetic. 
His  friendship  for  the  new  British  Agent  was 
undoubtedly  sincere,  and  his  visit  to  Sir  Eldon 
Gorst's  death-bed  should  be  remembered  by 
Englishmen  in  his  favour.  It  must  also  be 
admitted  that,  violent  as  his  dislike  for  England 
was,  he  was  invariably  coiurteous  to  her  repre- 
sentatives in  Egypt. 

Sir  Eldon  Gorst  undoubtedly  broke  the 
alliance  between  the  Khedive  and  the 
Nationalists  of  the  extreme  faction.  This 
alhance  was  not  renewed  till  1913,  when  Abbas 
Hilmi,  who  had  large  estates  in  Turkej^  and 
regularly  visited  Constantinople,  fearing  for  his 
interests,  made  terms  with  some  of  the  ex- 
tremists. Others  remained  hostile,  and  the 
Committee  Government,  with  which  he  \\as 
frequently  on  bad  terms,  and  against  which  he 
undoubtedly  intrigued,  supported  theni.  On 
July  24,  1914,  a  half -insane  Egyptian  student 
fired  at  and  wounded  the  Khedive,  then  on  a 
visit  to  Constantinople,  as  he  drove  past  the 
Sublime  Porte.  The  ruler's  injimes  were  not 
severe  :  the  would-be  assassin  was  shot,  stabbed, 
and  sabred  with  much  promptitude  by  the  Otto- 


man escort,  who.  in  their  inopportune  or  prudent 
zeal,  woimded  several  passers-by,  and  by  dis- 
patching the  culprit  rendered  further  police 
researches  fruitless.  The  Committee  Goverrunent 
was  prodigal  of  kind  attentions  to  the  previously 
detested  '"  Vali  of  Egypt."  Ere  Abbas  Hilmi 
had  fully  recovered  from  his  wounds,  the  Great 
War  had  broken  out.  He  asked  the  British 
Government  for  help  to  retiu-n  to  Egypt.  The 
request  was  most  embarrassing.  The  Army  of 
Occupation  had  not  yet  been  reinforced,  the 
population  was  already  disttu:"bed  by  tlie 
economic  crisis,  and  the  return  of  a  riiler  who 
had  sho\\n  such  capacity  for  intrigue  and  such 
skill  in  rendering  the  position  of  his  Ministers 
impossible  would  have  added  to  the  difliculties. 
He  was  recommended  to  remain  at  Constanti- 
nople. The  Austro-Hungarian  and  German 
Ambassadors  promptly  made  full  vise  of  theij* 
opportunity  and,  thanks  to  their  efforts, 
the  Austrophile  or  Anglophobe  sentiments  of 
Abbas  and  the  assun:ied  friendliness  of  the 
Turkish  Government  were  speedily  able  to 
reconcile  hiui  with  the  all-powerful  Committee 
of  Union  and  Progress.  Within  a  month  of  the 
outbreak  of  war  he  was  discussing  the  invasion  of 
Egypt  by  the  Turks  with  INIinisters  and  Generals, 
while  his  agents  at  Cairo  and  Alexandria  were 
spreading  alarming  reports  concerning  his 
intentions.  The  British  Ambassador  suggested 
that  he  should  withdraw  for  a  while  to  Italy. 
It  was  Abbas  Hilmi's  last  chance.  He  refused 
to  entertain  the  suggestion  and  thus  signed  his 


BRITISH    SOLDIERS    DIGGING    TRENCHES    IN    THE    DESERT. 


290 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


EGYPT    AND    THE    NILE. 

1.    Grfat  Pyramid  of  Gizeh.     2.    A  street  in  Cairo.     3.    Blrds-eye  view  of  Cairo.     4.  The  Nile  bridge, 

Cairo.     5.   Assuan. 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


■29  J 


own  political  dpath-warrant.  His  alliance  with 
the  Turkish  Government  grew  closer.  The 
Egyptian  police  was  constantly  coming  across 
the  tracks  of  his  agents.  A  few  weeks  after  the 
outbreak  of  war  with  Turkey  none  who  knew 
his  historj'  and  that  of  his  relations  with  the 
Committee  were  much  astonished  to  hear  that 
the  Talaats  and  Envers,  after  flattering  his 
vanity  and  informing  the  Moslem  world  that 
he  would  lead  the  "  Holy  Warriors  "  to  Cairo, 
had  suddenly  turned  upon  their  dupe,  accused 
him  of  playing  a  double  game,  and  sent  him 
packing.  It  was  left  to  the  Egyptian  Govern- 
ment, in  deference  to  a  request  from  Sir  John 
Maxwell,  to  appoint  a  sequestrator  of  his 
private  properties  "  in  the  interests  both  of  His 
Highness  and  of  His  Highness's  creditors." 

The  extremist  Nationalist  group,  kno^Ti  as 
the  "  Hisb  el  Watani  "  (Patriotic  Party),  was  in 
an  evil  plight  when  tlie  Great  War  broke  out. 
This  party  in  its  tendencies  somewhat  resembled 
the  extreme  wing  of  the  Committee  of  Union 
R.nd  Progress,  which  its  brightest  ornaments 
eventually  joined.  There  had  been  "  National- 
ism "  enough  in  Egypt  before  it,  largely  owing 
to  the  great  uncertainty  that  prevailed  as  to 
our  intentions,  but  many  so-called  "  Nation- 
alists "  were  simply  trimmers,  who,  seeing  the 
Khedive  and  certain  magnates  hostile  to  the 
British — who  might  one  day  leave  the  country 
— thought  it  safer  to  follow  the  lead  of  Abdin. 
After  the  Fashoda  incident,  and  still  more  after 
the  Anglo-French  Agreement  of  1904,  many  of 
these  waverers  rallied  to  the  British  Occupation. 
The  extremist  party  owed  its  existence  to 
Abbas  II.,  who  assisted  its  leader,  Mustafa 
Kamil  Pasha,  and  his  group  with  subventions 
which  enabled  them  to  foimd  a  violent  but  well- 
edited  journal,  called  Al  Lewa  {The  Standard). 
Mustafa  was  a  Turco -Egyptian  demagogue, 
whose  pleasant  manners  and  French  veneer 
found  him  some  influential  friends  at  Paris, 
while  his  genuine  eloquence  inflamed  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  student  class.  After  a  while 
he  showed  independent  tendencies  which  greatly 
annoyed  the  Khedive,  who  cut  off  supplies,  and, 
after  making  use  of  him  against  Lord  Cromer, 
gave  him  the  cold  shoulder  when  Sir  Eldon 
Gorst  was  British  Agent.  Whether  Mustafa 
could  have  stood  on  his  own  feet  after  tlie 
Khedive  had  disowned  him  is  not  certain.  Ho 
died  rather  suddenly  in  the  winter  of  1907-1 90S, 
and  the  examination  of  his  affairs  revealed  a 
deplorable  confusion,  from  which  his  journal  and 
supporters  never  completely  recovered.     After 


SHEIKH    SHAWISH. 


[Lekeiian. 


his  death  the  Francophile  veneer  of  his  party, 
which  had  already  shown  signs  of  scaling  off, 
disappeared  entirely,  and  it  became  frankly 
reactionary',  Turcophile,  and  anti-European — 
save  where  Germany  was  concerned.  Its  leaders 
were  Mohamcd  Bey  Farid,  a  rather  unimportant 
agitator,  and  Slieikh  Abdul  Aziz  Shawish,  a 
fiery  Tunisian  who  had  learnt  English  admirably 
when  Assistant  Professor  of  Arabic  at  Oxford, 
spoke  well,  and  thoiifjh  known  when  a  law 
student  as  "  Ahmak  ed  Dawla  "  (the  State  Fool), 
appealed  to  the  fnnatical  through  his  knowledge 
of  the  Koran  and  tlie  Traditions.  The  murder 
of  Butros  Paslia  Ohali,  already  referred  to, 
by  a  student  named  Wardani  was  credited 
by  pnpulnr  report  to  the  promptings  of 
Shawisli  and  his  friends,  but  no  proof  of 
this  was  discovered,  and  the  crime  may 
equally  well  have  been  inspired  by  Wardani's 
friends  among  the  revolutionaries  of  Constanti- 
nople, who  had  sent  emissaries  to  Egypt  in 
1009.  After  Lord  Kitchener's  arrival  in  Egypt 
the  relations  between  the  extremists  and  the 
Khcdiv<e,  who  had  a  terror  of  assassination, 
were  fitfully  resumed,  but  neither  trusted  the 
other,  and  Abbas  Hilmi  was  probably  rather 
relieved  when  Shawish  and  Farid  fled  the 
country,  to  avoid  trial  on  charges  of  abetting 
re  ipon,  and  took  refuge  at  Constantinople. 
With  their  less  dangerous  local  successors  he 
was  on  better  terms,  but  the  flight  of  Shawish 
took  the  sting  out  of  the  extremist  group,  which 
had  never  been  really  dangerous,  except  as  a 


292 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


TROOPS    DISEMBARKING   IN    EGYPT. 

weapon  in  the  hands  of  the  Khedive  and  of 
Turkish  fishers  in  troubled  waters.  Shawish 
became  a  leading  member  of  the  Committee  of 
Union  and  Progress  and  counsellor  to  Talaat 
and  Enver.  Another  Egyptian  Nationalist, 
Dr.  Ahmed  Fuad,  was  appointed  to  the  Intelli- 
gence Department  of  the  Turkish  Foreign 
Office.  The  leaders  left  in  Egypt  indulged  in  a 
certain  amovuit  of  pro -German  and  pro -Turkish 
talk  in  bars  and  cafes,  but  no  single  Egyptian 
was  induced  thereby  to  risk  his  skin  in  derailing 
a  train  or  blowing  up  a  bridge.  The  censorship 
checked  anj'  jom-nalistic  manifestations  on 
their  part,  and  when  war  broke  ovxt  with 
Turkey  some  of  them,  who  had  been  allowed 
to  continue  to  edit  their  newspapers,  re- 
quested to  be  allowed  to  go  to  Italy,  and 
their  request  was  granted. 

A  far  inore  dangerous  group,  the  "  Servants 
of  the  Kaaba  "  (the  Holy  Stone  at  Mecca),  was 
scarcely  represented  in  Egypt  before  the  war. 
Sheikh  Shawish  was  one  of  its  leading  lights, 
but  its  chiefs  were  usually  Indian,  Afghan,  and 
Turkish  Moslems.  Some  of  its  emissaries,  who 
were  sent  to  Egypt  to  incite  the  Indian  Moslem 
troops  against  their  officers,  were  caught  and 
expelled  from  the  country.  They  were  Afghans 
or  Indians. 

For  several  years  before  the  ovitbreak  of  the 
Great  War  German  dijalomatists,  as  the  French 


^'l'llow  Book  related,  had  sough*  to  make 
Egypt,  as  tlie  intellectual  centre  of  the  Arab 
world,  a  base  for  their  propaganda,  which  was 
directed  against  England,  France,  and  to  some 
extent  Italy.  By  posing  as  tlie  friends  of 
Turkey  they  won  to  their  side  the  pro -Turkish 
elements  among  the  Arabs.  By  flattering  the 
extremist  Egyptian  Nationahsts  they  main- 
tained friendly  relations  with  the  Hisb  el  Watani, 
and  their  relations  with  the  Ottoman  High 
Commissariat  and  with  the  Khedive  were 
friendly.  Baron  Max  von  Oppenheim,  Coun- 
cillor with  Ministerial  r^nk  to  the  German 
Agency  at  Cairo  from  1904  to  1909,  an  energetic 
but  somewhat  theatrical  intriguer,  showed 
much  pro-Turkish  activity  in  1906,  the  year  of 
the  Akaba  incident  and  of  the  Conference  of 
Algeciras.  In  the  same  year  a  branch  of  the 
Deutsch-Orient  Bank,  the  advanced  guard  of 
German  political  and  financial  penetration  in 
the  Near  East,  was  founded  at  Cairo.  Its 
methods  included  house-to-house  touting, 
appeals  to  the  nationalist  sentiment  against 
Coptic  moneylenders  and  British  '"  Ijlood- 
suckers,"  the  offer  of  credit  on  insufficient 
security,  and  the  bait  of  heavy  interest, 
amounting  in  some  cases  to  4  per  cent., 
on  deposits.  Rival  banlcs  were  loud  in  their 
denunciations  of  the  unprofessional  methods 
employed  by  the  German  and  Austrian  Jews 
who  controlled  and  managed  the  Egyptian 
branch,  but  when  the  Germans  burnt  their 
fingers  by  losing  unsecured  advances  to  un- 
trustworthy, if  Gennanophile,  notables,  anger 
gave  way  to  mirth.  The  Deutsch-Orient 
Bank  eventually  brought  its  policy  into  line 
with  that  of  other  Egj^ptian  banks,  but  had 
none  the  less  temporarily  to  suspend  payment 
after  the  outbreak  of  war,  to  the  huge  indigna- 
tion of  its  Egj'ptian  clientele. 

More  important  than  these  politico-financial 
experiments  were  the  intrigues  carried  on  by 
members  of  the  staff  of  the  German  Agencw 
Baron  von  Oppenheim,  though  he  corresponded 
with  the  Kaiser  over  the  indignant  heads  of 
his  official  chiefs,  and  was  even  invited  to  a 
"  lunch  intune  "  at  Potsdam  to  which  his  then 
chief  was  not  invited,  was  not  a  persona  grata 
either  with  Herr  Ruecker-Jenisch,  A\ho  dis- 
liked subterranean  politics,  or  with  Count 
Bernstorff.  who  preferred  more  open  warfare. 
He  was,  however,  on  good  terms  with  Prince 
Hatzfeldt,  who  succeeded  Bernstorff,  and  from 
1908  onwards  lost  no  chance  of  establishing 
close    relations    with    Nationahst    or    Turkish 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


•293 


intriguers.  After  the  Baron's  departure  tlie 
threads  of  German  intrigue  in  Egypt  were 
confided  to  Dr.  Pruefer,  a  retiring  httle  man, 
but  a  fme  Arabic  scholar,  who  had  travelled 
Huich  in  Syria  and  visited  the  Egyptian 
extremist  leaders  and  certain  reputed  Pan- 
Islamic  agents  in  Oriental  disguise.  In  1911  the 
leaders  of  the  Hisb  el  Watani,  Sheikh  Shawish 
and  Mohamed  Bey  Farid,  entered  into  an 
agreement  with  Prince  Hatzfeldt  whereby  they 
pledged  themselves  to  use  all  their  influence 
with  the  Union  and  Progress  leaders  at  Constan- 
tinople, to  oppose  any  attempt  to  bring  about 
a  rapprochement  between  Great  Britain  and 
Turkey  and  to  obtain  jNIoslem  support  for  the 
Deutsch-Orient  Bank.  In  return  they  re- 
ceived "  postal  facilities  " — i.e.,  the  use  of  the 
German  official  valise  for  the  forwarding  of 
compromising  documei.ts  to  Constantinople — 
and  monetarj^  subventioiis.  When  the  ex- 
tremists fell  on  evil  days  and  Shawish  and 
Farid  had  to  fly  to  Constantinople,  the  German 
Acting  Diploniatic  Agent  in  Egypt,  Baron 
Richthofen,  had  the  effrontery  to  propose 
Dr.  Pruefer  as  the  German  official  candidate  for 
the  post  of  Director  of  tlie  Khedivial  Library, 
in  which  he  \\ould  have  had  abundant  oppor- 


tunities of  influencing  Moslem  students  and 
divines.  The  scheme  failed  owing  to  the  wari- 
ness of  Hishmet  Pasha,  then  Minister  of 
Education,  who  refused  to  be  "  rushed," 
and  the  subsequent  opposition  of  the  British 
Agency.  Meanwhile  the  German  Agency 
maintained  close  and  friendly  relations  with 
Abdin  Palace  and  with  the  Ottoman  High 
Commissariat,  and  attempted  to  open  direct 
relations  with  the  Sheikh  es  Senussi,  while  the 
German  Embassy  at  <."onstantinople  kept  in 
touch  with  Shawish  and  other  exiled  extrenaists. 
Dr.  Pruefer  left  Egypt  early  in  1914,  and  was 
next  heard  of  in  comiexion  with  the  ^lors 
affair,  which  will  Ije  described  later.  He  and 
liis  chiefs,  together  with  certain  German  resi- 
dents, had  undoubtedly  succeeded  in  infecting 
a  limited  nmiiber  of  Egyptians  and  P^gypto- 
Turks  with  Germanophile  ideas,  but  this  \\ as 
the  limit  of  their  success.  More  timid  and 
more  practical  than  the  Turks,  their  Egyptian 
friends  confined  themselves,  even  when  the 
( Jerman  armies  were  near  Paris,  to  harmless 
demonstrations  of  sympathy,  which  became 
more  discreet  as  each  fresh  British  reinforce- 
ment reached  Egypt. 

Abdul    Hamid    had  organized   Pan-Islam  ism 


0iemt^BSs^  ■  "■■■ 


SUDANESE    SOLDIERS. 


34 


294 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE     WAR. 


!^  ■  ¥  r^ 


AN    EGYPTIAN    DRINK. 

for  defensive  purposes.  Having  given  the  \\  iider 
Moslem  elements  of  his  Empire  a  free  hand  to 
plunder,  and  at  times  massacre,  non-Moslems, 
he  sought  to  exalt  the  prestige  of  the  Turkish 
Kaliphate  among  Moslems  subject  to  non- 
Moslem  rule  or  administration,  so  that  pressure 
exercised  by  Eiu-opean  States  on  behalf  of 
Ottoman  Christians  might  be  met  by  counter- 
pressure  apphed  by  their  Moslem  subjects  on 
behalf  of  an  unjustly  hmniliated  Kaliph.  In 
Eg5q:)t,  as  Lord  Cromer  confessed  in  1906,  he 
met  with  some  success  :  tlie  sympathies  of  a 
large  number  of  Egjqjtians  were  on  the  Turkish 
side  dvuing  the  Akaba  dispute.  After  his  fall 
the  Committee  of  Union  and  Progress  continued 
liis  Pan-IslaiTiic  policy,  which  in  their  hands 
gradually  took  an  aggi-essive  form,  and  though 
at  first  hampered  in  Egypt  by  the  Khedive's 
change  of  front,  tlie  death  of  Mustafa  Kamil, 
and  the  indignation  aroused  among  Moslem 
Conservatives  by  the  manner  in  which  Abdul 
Hamid  was  deposed,  its  agents  gradually 
regained  ground.  They  \\ere  helped  in  this  by 
the  general  sympathy  for  Turkey  felt  through- 
out the  Near  East  when  Italy  attacked  the 
Ottoman  Empire  and  by  the  long-successful 
resistance  of  the  Turco -Arabs  of  Cyrenaica 
luider  Enver  Bey  and  Aziz  el  Masri,  while 
Ismail  Hakki,  the  real  head  of  the  Ottoman 
High  (Commissariat  at  Cairo,  was  in  close  touch 
with   the  Nationalist   extremists   and    lost   no 


cliance  of  flattering  wealthy  Egyptian.s  who 
were  likely  to  subscribe  to  Turkish  political 
or  patriotic  funds.  When  Sheikh  Shawish  and 
Mohamed  Farid  Bej-  left  Egypt  to  avoid 
arrest,  the  former  edited  a  subventioned 
journal  within  a  few  doors  of  the  Porte. 
Egyptian  students  of  extremist  views  had 
already  had  a  friendly  reception  at  Constanti- 
nople ;  Wardani,  the  murderer  of  Butros  Pasha, 
had  visited  Constantinople  in  1909  and  had 
been  photographed  in  the  contpany  of  prominent 
members  of  the  Committee.  After  the  return 
of  the  Committee  Government  to  power  at 
Constantinople  over  the  corpse  of  Nazim  Pasha, 
Pan-Islamism  of  a  most  mihtant  and  aggressive 
description  was  openly  preached  by  the  Turkish 
Press  and  by  members  of  the  "  Executive 
Committee,"  to  which  Sheikh  Shawish  and  his 
imitator.  Sheikh  Salih  et-Tunisi,  Enver  Pasha's 
Arabic  tutor,  belonged.  Enver  founded  an 
"  Arab  bureau,"  which  entered  into  close 
relations  with  Egyptian  malcontents,  and  imder 
the  auspices  of  Ismail  Hakki  Alexandria  and 
Cairo  became  centres  of  political  espionage  and 
pro -Turkish  propaganda.  The  plot  against 
Aziz  el  Masri,  if  due  in  the  first  instance 
to  the  jealotisy  of  Enver  Pasha,  was  worked  up 
by  Shawish,  Sheikh  Salih  et-Tunisi,  and  certain 
Egyptian  jotu:nalists  and  Beduins,  though  the 
better  elements  in  the  covmtry  were  disgusted 
by  the  persecution  of  this  brave  Egj'ptian. 
Many  of  the  Turkish  Ulema  and  students  of 
Al-Azhar  worked  in  the  interests  of  the  Com- 
mittee among  the  religious.  Certain  Beduin 
notables  were  also  approached  by  Turkish 
agents,  but  it  is  an  interesting  fact  that  no 
attempt  was  made  to  win  over  the  "  fellaheen." 
The  relations  between  the  Ottoman  Special 
Mission  and  Abdin  grew  closer,  and  in  ]\Iay  and 
Jume,  1914,  Ismail  Hakki  caused  alms  to  be 
distributed  in  certain  mosques  in  the  name  of 
"  Es-Sultan  illi  gaih " — the  Sultan  who  is 
coming — a  performance  Mhicli  would  suggest 
that  some  at  least  of  the  Turkish  extremists 
were  well  aware  that  1914  would  be  a  year  of 
tension,  if  not  of  \\  ar,  and  had  determined  to 
profit  from  any  trouble  that  ensued  in  Egypt. 
I<ate  in  June  Ismail  Hakki  left  Egypt.  The 
outbreak  of  war  in  August  seemed  to  the  adven- 
turers of  Constantinople  and  Salonika  a  heaven- 
sent opportunitj'-  for  the  carrying  out  of  then* 
Pan-Islamic  schemes  at  the  expense  of  the  Triple 
Entente.  To  what  lengths  they  were  prepared 
to  go  long  before  the  outbreak  of  war  with 
Turkey  was  shown  by  the  fact  that  Shukri  Bey, 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


295 


Acting  Ottoman  High  Commissioner,  received 
orders  as  soon  as  war  broke  out  in  Europe  to 
prepare  public  opinion  in  Egypt  for  a  Turkish 
invasion,  and  by  the  disclosures  of  the  Mors 
trial.  A  German,  Lieut.  R.  C.  Mors,  of  the 
Egyptian  police,  was  arrested  in  Alexandria  on 
arriving  from  Constantinople  in  September, 
He  had  explosives  and  compromising  papers  in 
his  possession.  He  confessed  under  exan^ination 
that  he  had  been  introduced  by  Dr.  Pruefer 
to  Enver  Pasha,  who  spoke  of  military  opera- 
tions in  Egypt.  He  had  a  long  conversation  with 
Omar  Fauzi  Bey,  of  the  Ottoman  General  Staff, 
on  September  6.  This  officer  had  planned  a 
scheme  for  the  creation  of  disturbances  in 
Egypt  by  bands  of  malefactors  under  Turkish 
officers  and  for  an  attack  on  the  Canal  by 
Beduins.  Enver  afterwards  discussed  this 
subject  with  Mors,  who  was  finally  given 
explosives  to  hand  over  to  Turkish  agents  or 
sympathizers  in  Egypt.  He  was  condemned  to 
death,  but  his  sentence,  owing,  no  doubt,  to  his 
interesting  confession,  was  afterwards  com- 
muted. 

Though  more  fitful,  Turkish  intrigue  in  Egypt 
was  more  formidable  than  that  of  the  Germans, 
owing  first  to  the  religious  ties  that  xmited 
Egypt  and  Turkey,  and  secondly  to  the  quite 
undeserved  prestige  of  the  Turkish  Army  and 
Govemraent  in  Egypt.  This  prestige  was  mainly 
due  to  the  fact  that  the  Turkish  rulers  of  Egypt 


had  seldom  lost  an  opportunity  of  beating, 
squeezing,  or  otherwise  terrorizing  the  Egyp» 
tians,  who  had  not  yet  got  over  their  nervous 
respect  for  their  former  masters,  and  still  felt 
flattered  if  they  could  marry  Turkish  wives. 
Nevertheless,  it  failed,  as  other  intrigues  failed, 
because  the  great  mass  of  the  Egyptians  had 
no  great  economic  grievances  to  complain  of, 
and  because  the  Turks,  as  usual,  mistaking  their 
own  desires  for  realities,  behoved  that  persons 
who  from  time  to  time  invoked  curses  on  the 
infidel  and  blessings  on  the  Sultan  were  ready 
to  sacrifice  themselves  for  the  Talaats  and 
Envers.  Lord  Cromer,  in  his  book  "  Abbas  IL," 
describes  how  an  old  Anglophile  Sheikh  replied 
to  those  who  asked  him  why  he  put  his  name  to 
a  petition  to  the  Sultan  begging  him  to  save  the 
country  from  the  "  abhorred  presence  "  of  the 
Enghsh.  "It  is  all  empty  words,"  he  replied, 
"  I  often  say  to  my  camel  or  to  my  horse  if  in 
some  trifUng  way  he  tries  my  patience,  '  Curses 
on  you.  May  Allah  strike  you  dead,  oh,  son  of 
a  pig,'  and  if  I  thought  it  would  really  happen 
I  should  be  silent  ;  but  I  know  that  the  beast 
will  remain  unlianned.  So  also  I  know  that  tljo 
English  will  stay  here,  whether  I  sign  a  petition 
or  not.  What  does  it  matter,  then  ?  I  please  our 
Lord,  the  Khedive  ;  the  English  remain  all  the 
same  and  look  after  my  interests  and  every  one 
is  happy  all  round." 

The  economic  meas\ires  taken  by  the  Govern- 


NEW    ZEALANUERS    AT    ZEITOUN. 


29G 


77-//';     TUiE^    HISTORY    OF     THE     WAR. 


[Zoli. 


MOHAMED    BEY    FARID. 


ment  iniiiiediateiy  after  the  outbreak  of  war 
in  Eiiroi^e  may  now  be  described.  The  bank- 
notes issued  by  the  National  Bank  of  Egyp^. 
were  made  compulsory  legal  tender  ;  and  the 
stock  and  share  exchanges  and  the  cotton  and 
cotton  seed  futiire  markets  were  closed.  The 
latter  markets  were  eventually  re-opehed  on 
December  7.  The  Government  also  issued  (in 
connexion  with  the  payment  of  debts)  various 
moratoria,  the  last  of  which  disappeared  on 
January  31,  1915,  and  appointed  Commissions 
in  each  Governorate  and  Province  to  fix  the 
maximum  prices  of  articles  of  first  necessity. 
The  exportation  of  foodstuffs  was  forbidden. 
This  prohibition  was  afterwards  modified  in 
the  case  of  beans,  maize,  and  millet,  the  export 
of  limited  quantities  of  wliich  was  allowed 
after  October  28.  These  measures,  thougii 
useful  enough,  failed  to  improve  the  situation 
of  the  landowners,  and  especially  of  the  smaller 
owners,  who  saw  the  price  of  cotton  falling 
steadily  and  fast.  In  late  August  a  cotton 
Commission,  comj^osed  of  Mr.  H.  Higgs,  C.B., 
Inspector- General  to  the  JMinistry  of  Finance, 
'Mi.  Dickson,  Sub-Governor  at  the  Alexandria 
Branch  of  the  Nitional  Bank  of  Egj^-j^t,  and 
Mr.  Critchley,  head  of  the  Alexandria  Branch 
of  the  Imperial  Ottoman  Bank,  was  appointed 
by  the  Minihtry  of  F. nance  to  take  measures  in 
England  to  meet  the  situation.  Its  members, 
who  between  them  could  claim  an  unrivalled 
knowledge  of  Egyptian  economics  and  offic'al 


I  i  nance,  held  repeated  consultations  witli  expert 
authorities  on  currency,  finance,  banking,  and 
cotton  in  London  and  l^ancashire.  They  came 
to  the  following  conchi.'iions  : 

Owing  to  diflicultics  of  finance  and  otlwr 
considerations  a  fresh  trade  dt-mand  for  cotton 
was  improbable  before  December.  Consump- 
tion, for  obvioas  reasons,  was  likely  to  be  le-r"? 
than  usual,  whereas  the  supply  seemed  much 
greater.  There  were  classes  of  people  interested 
in  cotton  who  would  be  prepared  to  buy  as  a 
speculative  investment,  provided  a  minimum 
price  were  fixed.  Banks  would  be  prepared 
to  finance  such  2'>urchases  subject  to  this  con- 
dition. There  were  administrative  difficulties 
in  the  way  of  making  individual  advances 
against  cotton  to  landowners  or  to  village 
vmits. 

Taking  these  factors  into  account,  the 
Commission  recommended  : 

(1)  That  the  novenimeiit  should  forthwith  aniiaiinco 
its  intention  to  buy  and  hold — if  necessary  till  Ortober, 
1915 — the  estimated  surplus  production  of  cotton,  fixing 
minimum  rates  for  the  purchase  of  first  and  second  pick. 
ings  as  hii;;h  as  prudence  allowed,  and  giving  preference 
to  small  cultivators.  It  was  the  Commission's  opinion 
that  the  mere  knowledge  of  this  decision,  coupled  with 
(2),  would  stiffen  prices  and  stimulate  demand  with.out 
involving  Government  in  heavy  purchases. 

(2)  That  the  acreas^e  to  be  planted  in  cotton  for  next 
crop  should  be  reduced  by  Decree  to  an  amount  roughly 
equivalent  to  the  estimated  carry  forward  from  the 
season.  (It  appeared  desirable  to  lose  no  time  in 
artificially  curtailing  the  price  of  a  commoditv  which 
was  likely  to  be  sold  at  a  loss  and  stimulate  the  produc- 
tion of  foodstuffs  which  were  likely  to  become  increasin;,'ly 
remunerative.) 

(3)  That  any  Government  piu-chases  be  financed  by 
the  issue  of  National  Bank  notes  with  the  specific 
guarantee  of  the  Eg3rptian  Government. 

(4)  That  a  Commissio'i  should  be  appointed  to 
authorise  further  issues  of  similar  notes  to  exporters 
against  approved  forward  sales. 

(o)  That  similar  notes  be  issued  as  required  for  sound 
business  by  approved  Bunks. 

(6)  That  in  order  to  avoid  an  excessive  note  issue  all 
emergency  currency  was  to  pay  a  penalty  based  on  Bank 
of  England  rate.  With  this  safeguard  it  was  anticioated 
that  a  comparatively'  small  gold  reserve  would  suffice  t<? 
steady  exchange. 

These  proposals  w-ere  telegraphed  towards 
the  middle  of  September  to  the  Egyptian 
^Ministry  of  Finance,  which  maj^  or  may  not 
have  discovered  better  expert  advice  in  the 
interim,  but  in  any  case  rejected  some  of  them. 
On  September  22  the  Government  decided  to 
reduce  the  acreage  under  cotton  to  a  million 
feddans  (1,100,000  acres),  and  Umit  the  area 
under  cotton  in  each  holding  to  25  per  cent,  of 
that  holding.  This  gave  rise  to  complaints 
from  the  tenants  who  paid  rent  on  the  basis  of 
the  area  under  cotton.      Finally,  on  Octohei-  .'JO, 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF     THE    WAF. 


•297 


♦♦ 


7         Vij'^i- 


'^"yj^i.-r^y 


>i^'>-l- 


8 


THE  EGYPTIAN  MINISTRY  AT  THE  OUTBREAK  OF  WAR.  [Phoiograpiisby /oia 
1.  Yusuf  Wahba  Pasha,  Finance.  2.  Hussein  Ruchdi  Paslia,  Premier  and  Minister  of  Interior.  3.  Ismail 
Sirri  Pasha,  Public  Works.  4.  Mohamed  Moheb  Pasha,  Wakfs  (Pious  Foundations).  5.  Ahmed  Hilmi 
Fasha,   Education.     6.    Adli    Yeghen    Pasha,   Foreign    Affairs.     7.   Abdul    Khalik    Sarwat    Pasha,    Justice. 

8.  Ismail  Sidki  Pasha,  Agriculture. 


208 


THK     TIMES     TII.^TOjRY    OF     THE    WAB. 


CAVALRY    IN    THE    DESERT. 


the  Goveniinent  modified  its  decree  of  Sep- 
tember 22,  and  limited  the  proportion  of  any 
one  holding  under  cotton  to  one -third  instead 
of  a  quarter.  Little  had  been  done  to  prevent 
the  breaking  of  the  market,  whether  owing  to 
the  existence  of  the  other  claims  on  the  attention 
of  the  British  Treasury  or  not,  it  is  uncertain. 
At  the  beginning  of  October  the  Government 
issued  the  following  communique  : 

The  Egj'ptian  Government  will  shortly  issue  Treasvii  j- 
bonds  to  the  value  of  £E. 8,000,000,  .£E. 5,000,000  of 
which  will  be  guaranteed  h\-  the  British  Government 
and  the  balance  by  the  Egyptian  Government's  reserve. 
The  bonds  will  be  redeemable  from  a  period  of  three  to 
six  months,  the  latter  being  the  maximum  date,  but  are 
renewable  if  necessary.  They  will  be  issued  in  London 
and  Cairo,  preference  being  given  to  which  of  the  two 
places  is  the  more  favourable,  but  as  far  as  possilije  the 
decision  of  the  Council  of  Ministers  to  issue  £E. 5,000,000 
in  London  and  £E. 3, 000,000  in  Cairo  will  be  carried  out. 
In  no  case  will  the  unit  of  £E. 8,000,000  be  exceeded. 
The  bonds  issued  in  Cairo  will  be  paid  by  the  Govern- 
ment in  National  Bank  notes,  printed  specially  for  the 
purpose  ;  those  issued  in  London  will  be  paid  in  gold 
or  in  notes  of  the  same  value. 

These  arrangements  ha^"ing  failed  to  assist 
the  needy  section  of  cultivators  effectively,  the 
Government  at  length  fell  in  to  some  extent 
with  the  recommendation  of  the  Cotton  Com- 
mission, and  commissioned  four  of  the  principal 
fiitns  at  Alexandria  to  buj-  the  cotton  belonging 
to  the  smallest  cultivators  as  soon  as  possible 
at  reasonable  prices  to  a  limit  of  £1,000,000, 
and  at  the  same  time  made  arrangements 
for  the  guaranteeing  of  certain  advances 
against  cotton  by  the  National  Bank  of  Egypt. 
These  measures  produced  a  good  effect,  and 
the  amovmt   of  cotton  which  the  Government 


needed  to  purchase  was  small.  The  market 
improved  immediately,  but  in  the  opinion  ot" 
good  judges  earUer  action  would  have  saved 
the  commimity  very  considerable  losses  and 
abated  discontent  more  rapidly  than  did  the 
somewhat  tardy  steps  above  referred  to. 

But  if  the  Ministry  of  Finance  did  not, 
perhaps,  quite  rise  to  the  situation  during  the 
period  that  followed  the  outbreak  of  war  with 
the  German  and  Austro-Hungarian  Empires 
and  preceded  the  rupture  with  Turkey,  the 
^linistry  of  Interior  did  admirable  work.  Its 
handling  of  the  problem  presented  by  the 
presence  of  large  numbers  of  enemy  subjects  iii 
Egj'pt  and  the  measures  it  took  against  Turkish 
and  native . suspects  when  Turkey  had  joined 
our  enemies  will  be  described  later.  It  may  be 
noted  here  that,  with  the  exception  of  a  law- 
increasing  the  penalties  for  breaches  of  the 
peace  committed  by  assemblies  of  more  than 
four  persons,  no  new  legislation  was  required 
to  meet  the  situation.  The  police  did  their  work 
well,  and  both  British  and  Egyptian  Inspectors 
of  Interior  kept  a  vigilant  ej^e  on  all  possible 
agitators,  while  vagabonds  were  sent  back 
whenever  possible  to  their  own  provinces  and 
bidden  to  stay  there.  The  direction  of  the 
various  administrative  measures  for  the  main- 
tenance of  order  during  the  first  three  months 
of  the  war  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Adviser  to 
the  Interior,  Jlr.  (now  Sir)  R.  Graham.  After 
the  proclamation  of  martial  law  the  General 
Officer  Conunanding  the  Army  of  Occupation 
was    ultimately    respon-sible    for    public    tran- 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


299 


quillity,  but  the  measures  taken  ad-  hoc  were 
still  carried  out  under  the  orders  of  the  Adviser, 
who  throughout  this -difficult  period  deserved 
right  well  of  his  country  and  of  Egypt. 

The  military  measures  taken  at  the  outset 
cannot  be  described  in  detail  here.  In  August 
the  garrison  was  reduced  through  the  departure 
of  units  belonging  to  the  Army  of  Occupation, 
but  in  September  Indian  troops,  detached  from 
the  Indian  Expeditionary  Force,  landed  in 
Egypt  and  were  marched  through  Cairo,  where 
they  made  an  excellent  impression.  The  Sirhind 
Brigade  remained  for  some  time  with  other 
Indian  units  near  the  Suez  Canal,  where  all  the 
Indian  forces  m  Egypt  were  eventually  posted, 
and  was  finally  sent  to  France,  its  place  and  that 
of  other  Indian  regiments  which  left  for  Europe 
being  taken  by  fresh  forces  from  Hindustan, 
including  Imperial  Service  troops.  In  Septem- 
ber the  East  Lancashire  Territorial  Division  and 
a  brigade  of  Yeomanry  arrived  in  Egypt.  Once 
they  had  settled  down,  these  troops  trained  on  in 
admirable  fashion,  and  though  inferior  in  phy- 
sique to  the  Australian  troops,  who  arrived  later, 
were  superior  to  them  in  discipline,  shooting  and 
manoeuvring  power.  Their  relations  with  the 
native  population  were  really  admirable.  At 
the  end  of  November  and  the  beginning  of 
December    the    Australian    and    New    Zealant 


Expeditionary  Force  arrived.  Both  contained 
admiraljle  military  material,  and  the  New 
Zealanders,  it  may  be  noted,  gave  much  less 
trouble  to  the  military  police. 

On  the  dejiarture  of  General  Sir  J.  Byng  in 
September,  Lieut. -General  Sir  John  Maxwell 
was  appointed  Commander-in-Chief  of  the 
British  Forces  in  Egypt.  Sir  John  Maxwell, 
who  at  the  outbreak  of  war  was  fifty-five  years 
of  age,  joined  the  Army  in  1879.  He  had 
spent  the  greater  part  of  his  military  career  in 
Egypt.  He  was  with  the  Black  Watch  in  the 
Egjqitian  War  of  1882,  and  was  present  at  the 
Battle  of  Tel-el-Kebir.  He  was  a  Staff  Captain 
in  the  Hill  Expedition  of  1884-85,  and  then 
served  as  Aide-de-Camp  to  Major  General 
Grenfell  with  the  Egyptian  Frontier  Field 
Force.  He  was  promoted  Brevet  Lieut. - 
Colonel  for  his  services  at  Dongola  in  1896,  and 
commanded  the  second  Egyptian  Brigade  at  the 
Battle  of  Omdufman.  In  the  South  African 
War  be  commanded  a  Brigade,  and  was  after- 
wards appointed  Military  Governor  of  Pre- 
toria. In  1908  he  was  given  the  command  of 
the  forces  in  Egypt,  and  he  held  this  appoint- 
ment ixntil  two  years  before  the  Great  War.  His 
great  popularity  with  the  native  population  of 
all  degrees  and  his  remarkable  knowledge  of 
1         the  country  were  \  aluable  assets  to  the  British 


SUDANESE    TRIBESMEN. 


300 


thl:   times   jijstol'Y   of   the   war. 


Occuptition  throughout  this  period,  and  when 
martial  law  was  declared  he  imposed  it  witii  the 
nunimum  of  necessary  severity  and  with 
practically  no  interference  whatever  witli  the 
normal  life  of  the  country. 

There  were  obvious  difficulties  in  dealing  with 
German  and  to  some  extent  with  Turkish 
propaganda  as  long  as  tlie  German  and  Austro- 
Hungarian  Governments  were  diplomatically 
represented  in  Egj^^Jt,  and  Herr  von  Pannwitz, 
Acting  German  Diplomatic  Agent  in  the  place 
of  Prince  Hatzfeldt's  successor,  Herr  von 
jNliquel,  received  a  bi-weekly  foreign  office 
"  bag  ■'  from  Berlin  by  way  of  Constantinople 
and  Beirut.  At  the  end  of  August  it  was  decided 
to  expel  those  Gennan  and  Austro-Hungarian 
subjects,  including  Diplomatic  and  Consular 
representatives,  whose  presence  was  considered 
undesirable.  An  intimation  to  this  effect  was 
therefore  conveyed  to  Dr.  von  Pannwitz  and 
Count  Louis  Szechenja  by  General  Sir  .T.  BjTig's 
aide-de-camp.  The  aggrieved  diplomatists 
protested  to  the  Egjptian  Government,  which 
retiu-ned  no  an-\\er  to  their  protest.  Article  13 
of  its  decision  of  August  5  dispensed  it  from  that 
formality.  On  Septeniber  10  both  left  Alex- 
andria for  Italy  by  the  s.s.  Catania,  and  the 
American  and  Italian  Diplomatic  Agents  took 
over  the  protection  of  their  nationals  in  Egj^Dt. 
Four  (Jerman  Consular  officials  were  left  under 
the  charge  of  the  American  Agency  and  t\\"o 
Austro-Hungarian  Consular  officials  vinder  that 
of  the  Italian  Agency.  The  German  Govern- 
ment and  that  of  the  Dual  ilonarchy  did  their 
utmost  to  make  capital  out  of  this  incident, 
more  especially  at  Constantinople.  But  the 
measiu"e  was  pvu^ely  a  military  one,  and  abso- 
Ivitely  defensible  on  military  grounds.  As  long 
as  a  British  army  occupied  Eg^^pt  the  Com- 
mander of  that  army  had  the  right  in  war  time 
to  take  all  necessary  measures  for  the  protection 
of  the  troops  under  liis  orders,  including  the 
expulsion  of  enemy  subjects,  whatever  their 
rank,  wliose  presence  \vas  inconvenient  or 
dangerous.  Till  the  end  of  August  no  steps  had 
been  taken  either  to  register  enemj*  subjects 
resident  in  Egypt  or  to  prevent  Austrian  and 
German  reservists  from  leaving  the  country. 
Many  of  them  did  so  ;  those  who  were  unable 
to  make  their  way  to  Italy  taldng  passages  for 
SjTian  ports.  In  September,  first  unmarried 
and  later  married  enemy  reservists  were 
prevented  from  leaving  the  coiuitr}-,  and  on 
October  1,  1914,  a  proclamation  was  issued  by 
the  General  Officer  Commanding  the  Army  of 


Occupation  callinc  on  all  German  and  Austro- 
Hungarian  subjects  to  register  themselves, 
failing  which  they  would  render  themselves 
liable  to  arrest  b\'  the  military  authorities. 
The  registration  form  showed  age,  profession, 
length  of  residence  in  Egypt,  family,  and  liability 
for  military  service.  It  was  only  retiu-ned,  in 
the  case  of  male  enemy  residents,  to  persons 
over  48  years  of  age,  for  whom  it  served  as  a 
licence  to  reside  and  carry  on  business  in  Egj-pt. 
The  authorities,  having  thus  obtained  a  list  of 
enemy  subjects  liable  to  service,  sent  all  un- 
married reservists  to  Alexandria,  whence  they 
were  dispatched  to  Malta  on  November  1. 
^Vith  them  v\ere  deported  the  crews  of  enemy 
ships  taken  as  prizes  and  lying  in  Egyptian 
ports.  The  papers  of  the  remaining  German  and 
Austro-Hungarian  subjects  of  from  18  to  45 
years  of  age  were  then  examined,  and  all  who 
could  not  furnish  proof  of  their  exemption  from 
military  service  were  dispatched  to  Malta  with 
a  munber  of  married  reservists  and  some  more 
crews  of  prize  ships  on  November  28.  Between 
November  1  and  December  17,  1,651  enc^my 
subjects  were  thub  deported.  After  the  pro- 
clamation of  the  British  Protectorate  and  the 
development  of  Turkish  military  preparations 
in  SjTia,  it  became  necessary  to  take  more 
sweeping  measiu-es  towards  German  and  Austro- 
Hungarian  subjects,  many  of  ^^hom  continued 
to  indoctrinate  ignorant  Egyptians  with  a  belief 
in  the  ultimate  success  of  the  Central  Powers. 
iMalta  being  now  overcrowded  with  deportees, 
including  many  Turks,  a  concentration  camp 
to  holii  about  150  persons  was  formed  at 
Alexandria.  There  were  sent  to  it  :  (o)  Germans 
and  Austro-Hungarians  who  wished  to  go  there  ; 
(6)  those  who  had  no  means  of  leaving  the 
country  or  whose  health  would  have  suffered 
from  a  European  winter  ;  and  (c)  persons  who 
for  special  reasons  had  not  previously  been 
deported.  Early  in  1915  all  Germans,  of  what- 
ever age,  were  requested  to  leave  the  comitry, 
and  exceptions  were  only  made  in  cases  of  age 
or  infirmity,  or  where  thoroughly  satisfactory 
guarantees  of  good  behaviour  were  forthcoming 
No  male  German  or  Austro-Hiuigarian  subjects 
were  allowed  to  land  in  Eg\pt,  and  no  women 
without  permission  of  the  General  Officer 
Commanding. 

These  measures  were  strict,  but  they  were 
by  no  means  harshly  applied.  No  Triestines, 
Dalmatians,  Is;trians,  or  Austro-Hungarian 
Slavs  were  deported  unless  there  were  par- 
ticular   reasons    necessitating    their    expulsion. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


301 


EGYPT    AND    THE    TURKISH    EMPIRE. 


302 


THE     TIMES    HISTOBY     OF     THE    WAB. 


No  women  were  deported  or  sent  to  concen- 
tration camps,  and  it  was  only  found  necessary 
to  request  three  to  leave  the  country.  In  cases 
where  the  head  of  a  family  had  been  deported 
and  the  fanaily  hud  no  means  of  getting  to 
Europe  tiir  cost  ot  the  passage  was  borne  by 
the  Government.  All  petitions  from  Germans 
and  Austrians  were  submitted  to  the  General 
Officer  Commanding,  whose  decision  in  their 
case  was  final.  All  denunciations  of  individuals 
were  investigated  liy  the  Ministrj'  of  the 
Interior  through  the  police,  and  the  decision  of 
the  General  Officer  Commanding  was  taken  on 
the  result.  Enemy  subjects  who  were  in  the 
service  of  the  Egyptian  Government  on  the 
outbreak  of  war  were  recjuired  to  sign  a  declara- 
tion in  which  they  gave  their  name,  rank, 
ftmctions,  and  nationality,  and  declared  that 
the  present  war  would  in  no  way  affect  the 
proper  discharge  of  their  duties  as  Egyptian 
officials,  and  that  during  the  war  they  would 
do  notliing  to  injiu-e  the  arms  or  interests  of 
Great  Britain  or  her  Allies.  On  November  25 
Sir  John  Maxwell  decided  that  no  Austro- 
Hungarians  or  Germans  could  be  allowed  to 
remain  in  Government  service,  except  such  as 
could  either  obtain  neutral  or  allied  citizenship 


or  a  certificate  from  a  neutral  or  allied  Con-sulate 
that  they  had  taken  all  steps  in  their  power  to 
renounce  their  old  and  to  acquire  a  new  nation- 
alitj'.  On  December  '.i  all  enemy  subjects  in 
Government  service  were  dismi.ssed,  and  the 
reinstatement  of  such  as  had  been  able  to  accept 
th(!  above  offer  was  begun.  Those  who  were 
dismissed  were  treated  as  if  their  posts  had 
been  suppressed,  and  their  rights  to  pension.s 
and  indemnities  liquidated.  Ten  mincjr 
Government  emploj^ees  were  deported  with 
other  enemy  subjects,  and  one  only  sent  to 
England  on  parole  at  his  own  request.  Through- 
out Sir  John  ]Maxwell  used  the  administrative 
machinery  of  the  Egyptian  Govemment  up  to 
the  point  where  enemy  subjects  were  handed 
o\er  to  the  military'  authorities.  That  this 
machinery  was  in  good  hands  was  proved  by  the 
rarity  of  complaints,  even  on  the  part  of  tho.se 
^s■ho  suffered  from  its  activity. 

Meanwhile  a  number  of  enemy  merchantmen, 
mostly  under  the  German  flag,  had  been  lying 
in  the  Canal,  and  had  in  many  cas«s  refused  to 
take  advantage  of  the  provisions  of  Article  20 
of  the  Egyptian  Government's  decision  of 
AugiLst  .'5,  whereby  they  were  permitted  to 
pass  through  the  Canal  and  quit  it,«  ports  of 


NATIVES    BRING    FOOD    TO    BRITISH    SOLDIERS. 


THE     TIMES    HISTOnr    OE     THE    WAR. 


803 


AUSTRALIAN    GAMP    AT    THE    PYRAMIDS. 


access  without  danger  of  capture  or  detention 
(in  Egyptian  waters),  provided  that  their 
passage  of  the  Canal  and  departure  from  its 
ports  of  access  were  effected  without  undue 
delay. 

The  danger  ot  a  block  in  the  Canal  was 
thus  greatly  increased.  In  one  or  two  instances 
attempts  to  sink  ships  in  the  Canal  were  only 
just  foiled  in  time  by  the  vigilance  of  the 
British  and  Egyptian  authorities.  The  growing 
tension  between  Great  Britain  and  Turkey 
made  it  necessary  to  remove  this  source  of 
danger,  and  on  October  14  the  Egyptian 
Government,  which  had  every  reason  to  com- 
plain of  the  refusal  of  the  captains  of  the 
vessels  in  question  to  respect  its  decision,  took 
drastic  measures  against  them.  On  that  and 
succeeding  days  Egyptian  troops  arriving  at 
the  Canal  ports  boarded  the  ships  in  question, 
22  in  number,  and  occupied  them  with  the 
object  of  preventing  disturbances.  Crews  were 
then  put  on  board  which  took  the  ships  to  sea, 
and  at  the  three-mile  limit  handed  them  over 
to  the  British  Naval  authorities,  who  took 
them  over.  All  reached  Alexandria  by  October 
20.  Meanwhile  the  British  Government  issued 
a  communication  to  neutrals  and  allied  Powers 
which  had  been  parties  to  the  Suez  Canal 
Convention.  It  pointed  out  that  since  the 
outbreak    of   war   certain   ships    belonging    to 


enemy  countries  had  been  detained  by  the 
Egyptian  Government,  some  on  account  of 
hostile  acts,  others  through  fear  that  such  acts 
were  contemplated  by  their  captains,  while 
other  vessels  had  declined  to  leave  the  Suez 
Canal  though  furnished  with  passes,  thus 
proving  that  they  wished  to  use  the  Canal 
ports  merely  as  ports  of  refuge.  The  British 
Government  could  not  admit  such  an  interpre- 
tation of  the  rights  of  free  access  and  use  of 
Canal  ports.  To  admit  it  would  imply  its 
consent  to  the  early  blocking  of  the  Canal.  It 
was  obvious,  therefore,  that  the  Egyptian 
Government  was  justified  in  removing  enemy 
ships  which  had  remained  long  enough  in  the 
Canal  porta  to  show  that  they  meant  to  stay 
there  till  the  end  of  the  war. 

Three  days  after  the  arrival  of  the  last  of 
these  ships  at  Alexandria  the  Supreme  British 
Court  sitting  in  Egypt  gave  notice  that  it  had 
instituted  actions  in  its  capacity  as  a  Prize 
Court  against  the  owners  and  parties  interested 
in  the  ships  in  question,  "  the  said  ships  having 
been  taken  as  prizes  by  H.M.  Ships  of  War, 
and  for  the  condemnation  thereof." 

Meanwhile  the  Turkish  Government  was 
pushing  on  its  preparations  for  a  campaign 
against  Egypt.  The  Sublime  Porte  assured  the 
British  Ambassador  at  Constantinople  that 
these  measures  were  piurely  defensive  and  had 


304 


THE     TIMES    HLSTUUY     OF     THE     WAR. 


SIR    MILNE    CHEETHAM. 

been  taken  only  in  consequence  of  the  general 
mobilization  of  the  Ottoman  Army.  But 
British  Consular  reports  spoke  not  only  of  the 
mobilization  of  the  Damascus  Army  Corps,  but 
of  the  formation  of  reserve  regiments  in  Syria,  of 
the  dispatch  to  Aleppo  of  troops  belonging  to  the 
Xllth  (Mosul)  Army  Corps,  and  of  an  active  pro- 
paganda among  the  Arab  tribes  of  the  districts  on 
the  borders  of  the  Sinai  Peninsula.  The  officially 
inspired  or  controlled  Arabic  newspapers  of 
Syria  and  Palestine  were  encouraged  to  publish 
violent  articles  against  the  Entente  Powers. 
In  September  the  entire  Ottoman  Press  began 
to  raise  the  Egyptian  question,  and  to  demand 
by  what  right  the  British  military  authorities 
whose  occupation  of  Egypt  the  Porte  had  never 
recognized,  had  ordered  the  German  and 
Austrian  Agents  to  leave  the  country,  though 
they  received  their  exequaturs  from  the  Porte. 
False  accusations  of  a  sort  calculated  to  arouse 
Moslem  fanaticism  were  also  made,  and  wild 
and  mythical  tales  of  "  massacres  "  of  "  harm- 
less Moslems  "  spread  abroad.  At  a  later  date 
parties  of  "  fedais  " — the  political  desperadoes 
and  agitators  whom  the  Committee  of  Union 
and  Progress  eniployed  for  political  assassina- 
tions, the  persecution  of  minorities,  and  the 
promotion  of  revolutionary  movements  in  the 
Caucasus  and  the  Balkans — began  to  drift  into 


Syria  and  incite  the  popnlatioTi  against  lOngland. 
At  Alcj)po  a  local  tailor  was  coiiinii.s.sioned  t<» 
make  "  a  variety  of  Indian  costumes  and 
measurements  "  on  designs  .supplied  by  German 
officers,  it  being  the  object  of  some  of  tlie 
"  fedais  "  to  enter  Eg^pt  in  Indiaii  disguise  and 
stir  up  the  population,  i^argc  quantities  of  arms 
were  meantime  being  distributed  among  the 
Syrian  Beduins  with  money  subventions. 
Beh.:;-ed-din  Shakir,  a  prominent  member  ot 
the  Committee,  had  made  an  agreeimuit  on 
behalf  of  the  Government  in  September  uitli 
the  Slieikh  of  the  Howeytat  tribe,  and  large; 
bodies  of  Beduins  were  collected  near  Gaza. 
Finally,  on  October  26,  the  long-ex2)ected  raid 
took  place,  and  2,000  armed  Beduins  crossed  the 
Egyptian  frontier  and  watered  their  camels  at 
Magdaba  wells,  20  miles  ^\ithin  the  ICgypiian 
border.  Before  the  Grand  Vizier  had  received 
official  news  of  this  aggi-essive  movement  a 
Turkish  destroyer  flotilla  had  raided  Odessa 
and  sunk  a  Russian  gimboat.  On  October  ;}0 
the  British,  French,  and  Russian  Ambassadors 
asked  for  their  passports,  and  on  Noveml)er  5 
Great  Britain  was  at  war  with  Turkey. 

The  British  authorities  in  Egypt  were  not 
caught  unprepared.  No  sooner  had  the  news  of 
the  attack  on  Odessa  and  the  rupture  of 
diplomatic  relations  with  the  Porte  reached 
Cairo  than  a  large  number  of  suspected  Turks, 
among  whom  were  several  officers,  sent  on 
enigmatic  missions  to  Egypt,  were  arrested, 
together  with  certain  Egyptians  whose  relations 
with  the  Ottoman  Special  Mission  were  suspect 
or  who  were  notorious  sedition-mongers.  Sir 
John  Maxwell's  plan  of  campaign  had  been 
skilfully  arranged.  The  British  officials  of  the 
Ministry  of  Interior  were  promptly  invested 
with  what  amounted  to  military  powers  to  deal 
with  sedition,  under  the  command  of  Sir 
Ronald  Graham,  the  Adviser  to  the  Minister 
of  Interior,  who  for  the  time  being  acted  £S 
Chief  of  Staff  to  the  General  Officer  Conunanding 
in  all  matters  connected  \^itli  the  maintenance 
of  order.  Orders  for  deportation  or  imprison- 
ment were  signed  by  the  Adviser  until  the 
situation  was  regularized  by  the  proclamation 
of  the  British  Protectorate.  What  amounted  to 
a  military  dictatorship  was  thu*^  inaugurated. 
On  November  2  the  following  proclamations 
wfjre  issued  : 

By    the    General    Officer    Commanding    His    Britannic 

Majesty's  Forces  in  Egypt. 

Notice  is  hereby  given  that  I  have  been  directed  by 

His  Britannic  Majesty's  Government  to  assume  mihtary 

control  of  Egypt  in  order  to  secure  its  protection.     The 


I 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE     WAR. 


305 


country    i>>    tlioreioie    placed    iitidcr    .Marlial    Law    from 
tliU  date. 

I,  John  Grenfell  Maxwell,  Liouteiiant-Genera!,  Com- 
manding His  Britannic  Jlaje-^ty's  Forces  in  Egypt, 
/entrusted  with  the  applieaiion  o!  Martial  Law,  hereby 
give  notice  as  follows  : 

(1)  The  powers  to  be  exercizeil  under  my  authority 
by  the  Military  Authorities  are  intended  to  supplement 
and  not  to  supersede  the  Civil  Administration,  and  all 
Civil  officials  in  the  service  of  the  Egyptian  Government 
are  hereby  required  to  continue  the  punctual  dischar;,'e 
of  their  respective  duties. 

{'')  Private  citizens  will  best  serve  the  common  end 
by  abstaining  from  all  action  of  a  nature  to  disturb  the 
public  peace,  to  stir  up  disaffection,  or  to  aid  the  enemies 
of  His  J3ritannie  Majesty  and  His  Allies,  and  by  con- 
forming promptly  and  cheerfully  to  all  orders  given 
under  my  authority  for  the  maintenance  of  public  peace 
and  good  order  ;  and  so  long  as  they  do  so  they  will  be 
subject  to  no  interference  from  the  Military  Authorities. 

(.3)  All  requisitions  of  service  or  of  property  which  may 
be  necessitated  by  military  exigencies  will  be  the  subject 
of  full  compensation,  to  be  assessed,  in  default  of  agree- 
ment, by  an  independent  authority. 

By  the  second  proclamation  Sir  Jolin  Maxwell 
res-erved  the  right  of  interfering,  if  necessary, 
in  the  civil  administration  of  the  country. 
This  right  was  not  exercized.  That  this 
was  so  was  due  to  the  ^\ise  and  patriotic 
conduct  of  the  Ministry.  Telegraphing  on 
December    19.    after   the    proclamation   of  the 


British    I'rotectorate,   The    Tltne.v  Cairo   Corre- 
spondent said  : 

On  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  with  Turkey  the  position 
became  admittedly  more  dilficult  and  delicate.  Holding 
their  mandate  from  the  Khedive  as  the  vassal  of  Turkey, 
-Alinisters  must  naturally  have  regarded  certain  measures 
which  the  situation  demanded  as  inconsistent  with  that 
mandate,  but  they  all  realized  that  their  first  duty, 
overshadowing  all  other  considerations,  was  to  Egypt 
and  the  Egyptians.  .  .  .  But  while  the  Ministry  as  a 
whole  acquitted  itself  commendably,  the  lion's  share  of 
all  the  anxious  and  strenuous  work  has  naturally  fallen 
on  the  shoulders  of  its  chief — Hussein  Ruchdi  Pasha  - 
to  whom  the  greatest  credit  is  due.  He  had  gone  thiough. 
the  most  trying  period  of  office  of  any  Egyptian  Pronier. 
The  sudden  assumption  of  control  by  the  military 
authorities  might  well  hiive  been  expected  periodically 
to  give  rise  to  what  many  men  in  his  position  might  have- 
resented  as  encroachment  on  the  civil  prerogatives. 
But  Ruchdi  Pasha  has  fehown  remarkable  adaptability 
and  appreciation  of  the  true  requirements  of  the  moment. 
At  no  time  has  there  been  friction,  nor  has  one  moment 
of  anxiety  been  caused  to  the  British  authorities,  who- 
appreciate  very  highly  his  sincere  and  valuable  co- 
operation, especially  in  the  difficult  circmnstances  of  the 
past  two  months. 

On  November  7  Sir  John  Maxwell  issued  a 

proclamation  announcing  that  a  state  of  war 

existed   as   from   November   5   between   Great 

Britain  and  Turkej'.  The  preamble  was  followed 

by  these  important  pas -ages  : 

Although  from  the  outsat  of  the  war  between  Hia 
Majesty  and  the  Emperors  of  Germany  and  Austriii  the- 


AUSTRALIAN    ENGINEERS    BUILDING    A    BRIDGE    OVER    A    CANAL. 


306 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE     WAR. 


SOME    MEN    OF    THE    9th   MANCHESTER 


Ottoman  Govemmenl.  under  tlie  influence  of  Hi.s 
Majesty's  enemies,  have  repeatedly  violated  the  riKhts 
secured  to  His  Majesty  by  international  law  and  by 
treaty,  His  Majesty's  Government  ha\'e  scrupulously 
abstained  from  any  retaliatory  action  imtil  compelled 
thereto,  not  only  by  militar}^  preparations  in  SyriM, 
which  can  only  be  directed  against  Epypt,  but  by  the 
violation  of  the  Egyptian  frontier  by  armed  bands,  and 
by  an  open  and  unprovoked  attack  by  the  Ottoman 
Naval  Forces,  under  German  ofTicers,  upon  the  territories 
of  one  of  His  Majesty's  Allies. 

Great  Britain  is  now  fighting  both  to  protect  the  rights 
and  liberties  of  Egypt,  which  were  oriainally  won  upon 
the  battlefield  by  Mehemet  Ali,  and  to  secure  to  her  the 
continuance  of  the  peace  and  prosperity  which  she  has 
enjoyed  durinc:  the  thirty  years  of  the  British  Occupation. 

Recognizing  the  respect  and  veneration  with  which 
the  Sultan  in  his  religious  capacity  is  regarded  by  the 
Mohammedans  of  Egypt,  Great  Britain  takes  upon 
Herself  the  sole  burden  of  the  present  war,  without  calling 
upon  the  Egyptian  people  for  aid  therein  :  but  She 
expects  and  requires,  in  return,  that  the  population 
shall  refrain  from  any  action  of  a  nature  to  hamper  Her 
military  operation  or  to  render  aid  to  the  enemy. 

The  dispositions  of  the  Egyptian  Govern- 
ment's decision  of  August  5  were  appUed  by 
Sir  John  Maxwell  to  the  Ottoman  Empire,  bvit 
no  period  of  grace  was  granted  to  Turkish 
merchantmen  in  Egyptian  ports.  Egj'pt  being 
an  Ottoman  vassal,  it  was  in\possible  to  take 
measures  against  Ottomans  residing  in  the 
country.  It  was  also  iinnecessary,  since  a  large 
number  of  the  non-Egyptian  Ottomans  were 
Syrians,  Armenians,  and  Greeks  who  were 
supporters  of  the  British  Occupation,  and  not 
a  few  of  the  Turlvs  were  deadl}^  enemies  of  tlie 
Committee  of  Union  and  Progress.  The  officers 
previously  referred  to  were  sent  to  Malta  with 
certain  Egyptians.  Other  suspects  were 
ordered  to  leave  the  country,  and  requests  to 
this  effect  were  served  on  Prince  Mohamed  Ali, 


brother  of  the  Khedive,  and  one  or  two  other 
members  of  the  Kbedivial  family,  who  with- 
drew to  Italy.  The  censorship  of  the  Press 
was  strengthened,  as  was  the  military  censor- 
ship. The  former  was  well  managed  at  Cairo, 
less  well  at  Alexandria.  The  inUitary  censor- 
ship grew  more  efficient  as  its  organization 
im])roved.  Active  steps  were  taken,  on  the 
whole  successfully,  to  prevent  the  importation 
and  dissemination  of  seditiovis  literature.  The 
l^lema,  by  a  proclamation  calling  on  the  Moslem 
Egyptians  to  abstain  from  political  agitation 
and  excitement,  greatly  assisted  the  Govern- 
ment and  the  British  mihtary  authorities. 

This  regime  was,  of  course,  exceptional  and, 
as  far  as  some  of  its  features  were  concsmed,  it 
was  necessarily  temporary.  As  long  as  Egypt 
was  de  jure  a  vassal  State  of  Turkey-  if  de  facto  a 
"  veiled  "  British  Protectorate,  Ministers  who 
held  their  mandate  from  a  prince  who  was 
notoriously  on  the  enemy's  side,  and  whose 
sovereignty  was  an  emanation  of  that  exercized 
by  the  Sultan,  Egypt's  Suzerain  could  not  well 
sign  orders  for  the  deportation  of  persons  whose 
crime  was  their  devotion  to  the  Sovereign  or 
the  Suzerain.  On  the  other  hand,  Advisers  and 
Inspectors  of  Interior  could  not  exercize 
exceptional  powers  over  the  heads  of  the 
Premier  and  his  colleagues  for  long  without 
injuring  the  prestige  of  the  latter.  And  the 
British  authorities  in  Egypt  had  nothing 
whatever  to  gain  by  injuring  the  prestige  of 
their  good  friends.  The  situation  had  some- 
how to  be  regularized.  Three  questions  had  to 
be  settled — that  of  the  Sultan's  suzerainty  over 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAB. 


307 


REGIMENT    AT    HELIOPOLIS    GAMP. 


Egj'pt,  that  of  the  Khedive,  and,  arising  out  of 
the  first  two,  that  of  the  future  government  of 
the  country.  Turkish  suzerainty  was  a  ghost 
that  had  to  be  laid.  It  had  ahvays  troubled 
some  men's  dreams  in  Egypt ;  of  late  it  had 
s?emed  to  trouble  more.  The  Turks,  bj!- 
forcing  war  on  the  Allies  and  by  massing  troops 
in  Syria  for  the  invasion  of  Egj^pt,  stood  to 
lose  their  vassal  province  unless  victorious. 
England  had  forborne  to  declare  a  protectorate 
after  Tel-el-Kebir  ;  she  had  disappointed 
Count  Achrenthal  by  declining  to  annex  the 
coimtry  when  he  had  torn  up  the  Treaty  of 
Berlin  and  annexed  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  ; 
she  had  made  no  use  of  the  occa.«ions  offered 
when  Abdul  Hamid  threatened  the  Sinai  and 
when  France  declared  a  protectorate  o^•er 
Morocco.  The  present  situation^ — Egypt 
practically  at  \\ar  with  Germany  and  Austria- 
Hungary,  yet  the  vassal  of  their  ally,  ruled  by 
a  Government  whose  mandate  emanated  from 
the  Sxiltan,  but  which  had  undertaken  to  give 
every  assistance  to  the  British  Army  of  Occu- 
pation in  the  struggle  with  the  Sultan's  allies 
— was  too  absurd  to  be  prolonged.  The  Com- 
mittee of  Union  and  Progress  had  led  Turkish 
suzerainty  in  the  game  for  Egypt.  It  was  for 
ixs  to  take  the  trick  and  declare  Turkish  suze- 
rainty- forfeit  to  the  King  of  England. 

The  Khedive  had  shown  little  hesitation  in 
joining  the  enemy.  His  past  was  not  such  that 
his  defection  could  be  excvised  as  having  been 
forced  upon  him.  He  had  intrigued  with  Abdul 
Hamid  against  Egj^Dtian  interests,  ^vith  the 
Committee    against    Arabs    and    with    Arabs 


against  the  Committee.  He  had  encom-aged 
wealthy  Eg\'ptians  to  aid  the  Senussi  in  his 
struggle  against  the  Italians,  and  he  had  aided 
the  Italians  against  the  Senussi.  He  had 
intrigued  with  Turks,  Arabs,  and  the  Central 
Powers  against  the  British  Occupation.  It 
M  as  impossible  that  he  should  remain  on  the 
Khedivial  throne.  But  no  Egyptian  machinery 
for  his  dethronement  existed.  The  Grand 
]Mufti,  as  the  mandatorj'^  of  the  Sheikh-vU-Islam 
of  Tiu-key.  who  liad  recently  declared  a  Holy 
A\'ar  (to  which  Egypt,  by  the  way,  paid  small 
attention)  against  England  and  her  AlUes, 
could  not  issvie  a  "  fetwa  "  of  deposition,  nor 
could  the  ]\Iinisters  depose  their  Sovereign.  It 
was  for  the  British  Government  to  declare  the 
Khedivial  throne  vacant  by  reason  of  the 
conduct  of  Abbas  Hiln^i.  who  had  joined  the 
King's  enemies. 

These  two  questions  were  easily  settled. 
But  the  question  of  the  future  status  of  Egj^t 
was  more  difficult.  There  were  two  alterna- 
tives— annexation  or  protectorate — for  Egyptian 
independence  was  not  desired  by  the  majority 
of  Egyptians,  and  could  not  have  been  main- 
tained against  even  a  second-rate  European 
State  without  a  close  alliance  with  the  domi- 
nant sea  Power.  There  were  arguments  for 
annexation  which  seemed  more  cogent  in 
London  than  in  Cairo.  The  annexationists 
believed  that  the  adoption  of  the  more  simjile 
if  more  violent  course  would  enable  Great 
Britain  to  deal  with  the  problem  of  the  foreign 
jurisdictions  in  Egypt  more  effectively  and 
expeditiously  than  would  otherwise  be  possible. 


;iU8 


THI^J     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


Some  tooI<  llu'  \ic\\  that  the  proclamalioii  of 
ii  protectorate  would  inerely  lead  in  the  end 
to  fresh  difficulties  between  the  Eg\7)tian  and 
J^ritish  sides  of  the  administration.  At  Cairo, 
on  the  otlier  liand,  it  was  held  by  those  best 
(jualific^d  to  form  an  opinion  that  this  less 
sliowy  2)olicy  was  the  soundest.  The  intel- 
lectual elements  among  the  Arab  peoples 
\\  hom  the  TurlcLsh  and  Levantine  Pan-Islamists 
had  been  striving  to  combine  agauist  us  had 
been  profoundly  impressed  by  our  unremitting 
efforts  to  prepare  the  Egyptians  for  self- 
government,  and  bv  our  abstinence  from  all 
action  calculated  to  repress  the  developnient  of 
local  institutions.  Again,  we  had  entered  into 
the  world's  struggle  on  behalf  of  "  small 
nationalities."  True,  a  national  feeling  as 
distinct  from  the  religious  bond  of  Islam  had 
not  vet  sunk  deep  into  the  minds  of  the  masses 
in  Egypt.  But  it  existed,  if  less  strongly  than 
in  most  European  States,  among  the  more 
enlightened  classes,  and  there  were  indications 
that  it  was  gaining  ground  among  them.  E\'en 
among  the  masses  there  was  a  racial  feeling 
or  particularism  which  contained  in  itself  the 
germs  of  nationalism  and  deserved  respect,  the 
more  so  when  it  was  remembered  that  the 
Egyptian  people  had  on  the  whole  behaved 
very  well  during  the  period  in  which  its  hostility 
might  have  proved  most  embarrassing  to  us. 
Finally  there  were  large  vested  interests  bound 
up  with  the  maintenance  of  the  House  of 
Mohamed  Ali,  the  dynasty  which  had  given 
Egypt  its   rulers  since  the  early  days   of   the 


nineteenth  century.  It  would  have  been  folly 
to  ignore,  and  ultimately  dangeroas  to  annoy, 
them.  After  hearing  both  sides  the  British 
Government  supported  the  "  men  on  the 
spot  "  and  decided  in  favour  of  a  protectorate. 
It  was  necessary,  too,  to  choose  the  Khedive's 
successor.  Prince  Hassein  Kamil,  uncle  of  the 
Khedive,  the  senior  member  of  the  reigning 
House  and  its  worthiest  representative,  was 
the  obvious  choice.  But  the  Prince,  though 
willing  to  accept  the  of?er  of  the  Khedivial 
tlirone,  was  in  no  hurry.  "  I  am  not  "  ar- 
riviste,' "  he  said  to  the  Special  Correspondent 
of  Tiic  Times,  to  whom  he  granted  an  interview 
just  before  his  accession.  "  I  had  no  need  to 
be,  for  I  '  arrived '  59  years  ago."  He  felt 
strongly  and  naturally  that  if  he  was  to  appear 
before  his  people  as  England's  nominee  to  the 
throne  of  his  deposed  nephew  he  must  appear 
with  something  in  his  hands.  Negotiations 
followed  between  him  and  the  British  Govern- 
ment's representative  at  Cairo,  Mr.  (now  Sir) 
jNIilno  Cheetham.  The  acting  British  Agent 
conducted  these  delicate  negotiations  in  a 
manner  that  won  the  admiration  of  all  who 
were  conversant  with  the  facts.  He  received 
useful  assistance  from  the  Oriental  Secretary 
to  the  British  Agency,  IVIr.  R.  Storrs.  It  was 
finally  settled  that  Prince  Hussein  should  ascend 
the  throne  with  the  title  and  style  of  Sultan, 
which  had  been  borne  by  the  independent 
Mameluke  rulers  of  Egypt^ — the  "  Soldans  of 
Egypt  "  of  our  crusading  ancestors — and  the 
Fatimides   before   them.     His   title   in   French 


STATE    ENTRY    OF    THE    SULTAN    INTO    CAIRO-CROWDS    AWAITING    ARRIVAL 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


309 


was  to  be  Hautesse,  in  Arabic  "  Azainat,"  to 
distinguish  him  from  the  Turkish  Grandviziers 
and  ex-Grandvi/Jers  and  Sheiks-nl-Islam  and 
the  minor  princ(?sof  the  Khedivial  family,  who 
bore  the  title  of  "  Altesse."  The  standard 
of  the  Khedivial  House,  three  white  crescents 
with  their  baclcs  to  the  staff,  each  with  a  five- 
pointed  white  star  between  the  horns  on  a  red 
field,  was  adopted  as  the  national  flag  of  Egypt. 
The  British  Government  appointed  a  British 
High  Commissioner  in  Egypt,  and  the  name 
of  "  British  Agency "  gave  place  to  that  of 
"  British  Residency,"  as  the  title  of  our  repre- 
sentative's official  residence.  For  this  impor- 
tant and  responsible  post  the  British  Govern- 
ment selected  Sir  Henry  McjNIahon,  an  ex- 
soldier,  who  had  won  high  distinction  as  a 
political  officer  under  the  Indian  Governnient, 
and  was  thoroughly  acquainted  with  Oriental 
ways  of  thought.  The  views  of  the  British 
Go\'ernment  as  regards  the  new  regime  were  set 
forth  in  the  following  commvinication,  which  was 
transmitted  to  Prince  Hussein  on  its  behalf  by 
Mr.  Milne  Cheethain,  and  afterwards  published  : 

Your  Highnkss, 

I  am  instructed  by  His  Majesty's  Principal  Secretary 
of  State  for  Foreign  Affairs  to  bring  to  the  notice  of 
Your  Highness  the  circumstances  preceding  the  out- 
break of  war  between  His  Britannic  Majesty  and  the 
Sultan  of  Turkey  and  tlie  changes  which  the  war  entails 
in  tlie  status  of  Egypt. 

In  the  Ottoman  Cabinet  there  were  two  parties.  On 
the  one  side  was  a  moderate  party,  mindfiu  of  the 
S3mipatliy  extended  by  Great  Britain  to  every  effort, 
towards  reform  in  Turkey,  who  recognized  that  in  the 
war  in  which  His  Majesty  was  already  engaged  no 
Turkish  interests  were  concerned  and  welcomed  the 
assurance  of  His  Majesty  and  His  Allies  that,  neither  in 
Egypt  nor  elsewhere  would  the  war  be  used  as  a  pretext 
for  any  action  injurious  to  Ottoman  interests  On  the 
other  side  a  band  of  unscrupulous  military  adventurers 
looked  to  find  in  a  war  of  aggression,  waged  in  concert 
with  His  Majesty's  enemies,  the  means  of  retrieving  the 
disasters,  military,  financial,  and  economic,  into  which 
they  had  already  plunged  their  country.  Hopmg  to  the 
last  that  wiser  counsels  might  prevail.  His  Majesty  and 
His  Allies,  in  spite  of  repeated  violations  of  their  riahts, 
abstained  from  retaliatory  action  until  compelled  thereto 
by  the  crossing  of  the  Egyptian  frontier  by  armed  bands 
and  by  unprovoked  attacks  on  Russian  open  worts  by 
the  Turkish  Naval  forces  under  German  officers. 

His  ]\Iajesty'b  Government  are  in  possession  of  ample 
evidence  that  ever  since  the  outbreak  of  war  with 
Germany  His  Highness  Abbas  Hilmi  Pasha,  late  Khedive 
of  Egypt,  has  definitely  thrown  in  hLs  lot  with  His 
Majesty's  enemies. 

From  the  facts  above  set  out,  it  results  that  the 
rights  ovt-r  Egypt,  whether  of  the  Sultan  or  of  the  laie 
Khedive,  are  forfeit  to  His  Maje.^ty. 

His  Majesty's  Govenunent  have  already,  through  the 
General  Officer  Commanding  His  Majesty's  Forces  in 
Egypt,  accepted  exclusive  responsibility  for  the  defence 
of  Egypt  in  the  present  war.  It  remain.^  to  lay  down 
the  form  of  the  future  government  of  tlie  coinitiy,  freed, 
as  T  have  stated,  from  all  rights  of  suzerainty  or  other 
rights  heretofore  claimed  by  the  Ottoman  CJoverniMi'nt. 


f**\ 

pl'^   ^ 

\ 

^^PJI^         *.    ' 

^^t^^r^'*^''^^^ 

1^'  • 

m^ 

^mMMmj^'^Jt 

^^''Nk 

Ik^^^ 

LIEUT.-GENERAL   SIR   J. 


iLif.iyeUc 

MAXWELL. 


Ot  the  rights  thus  accruing  to  His  Majesty,  no  less 
than  of  those  exercized  in  Egypt  during  the  last  thirty 
years  of  reform.  His  Majesty's  Government  regard 
themselves  as  trustees  for  the  inhabitants  of  Egypt. 
And  His  Majesty's  Government  have  decided  that  Great 
Britain  can  best  fulfil  the  responsibilities  she  has  incurred 
toward  Egypt  by  the  formal  declaration  of  a  British 
Protectorate,  and  by  the  government  of  the  country 
imder  such  Protectorate  by  a  Prince  of  the  Khedivial 
Family. 

In  these  circumstances  I  am  instructed  by  Hi> 
Majesty's  Government  to  inform  Your  Highness  that, 
by  reason  of  your  age  and  experience,  you  have  been 
chosen  as  the  Prince  of  the  Family  of  Mehemet  Ali  most 
worthy  to  occupy  the  Khedivial  position,  with  the  title 
and  style  of  Sultan  of  Egypt  ;  and,  in  inviting  Your 
Highness  to  accept  the  responsibilities  of  Your  high 
office,  I  am  to  give  you  the  formal  assurance  that  Great 
Britain  accepts  the  fullest  responsibility  for  the  defence 
of  the  territories  under  Your  Highness  against  all  aggres- 
sion whencesoever  coining  ;  and  His  Majesty's  Govern- 
ment authorize  me  to  declare  that  after  the  establish- 
ment of  the  British  Protectorate  now  announced  all 
Egyptian  subjects  wherever  they  may  be  will  be  entitled 
to  receive  the  protection  of  His  Majesty's  Government. 

With  the  Ottoman  suzerainty  there  will  disappear  the 
restrictions  heretofore  placed  by  the  Ottoman  tirnians 
upon  the  numbers  and  organization  of  Your  Highness's 
Army  and  upon  the  grant  by  Your  Higlmess  of  honorific 
distinctions. 

As  regards  foreign  relations,  His  Jfajesty's  Go\ern- 
ment  deem  it  most  consistent  with  the  new  responsibilities 
assumed  by  Great  Britain  that  the  relations  between 
Your  Highness's  Government  and  the  Kepresontatives 
of  Foreign  Powers  should  henceforth  be  conducted 
through  His  Majesty's  Representative  in  Cairo. 

His  Majesty's  Govenmicnt  have  repeatedly  placed  on 
record  that  the  system  of  Treaties,  known  as  the  Capitu- 
lations, by  which  Your  Highness's  Government  is  bomid 
are  no  longer  in  harmony  with  the  development  of  the 
country  :  but,  in  the  opinion  of  His  Majesty's  Govern- 
ment, the  revision  of  those  treaties  may  most  con- 
V(>nienfly  be  postponed  until  the  end  of  the  present  war. 


810 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


In  the  field  of  intomal  administration,  I  am  to  remind 
Yovir  Highness  that,  in  consonance  witli  tlie  traditions 
of  British  Policy,  it  has  been  the  aim  of  His  Majesty's 
Government,  while  working  through  and  in  the  closest 
association  with  the  constituted  Egyptian  Authorities, 
to  secure  individtial  liberty,  to  promote  the  spread  of 
education,  to  further  the  development  of  the  natural 
resources  of  the  country,  and,  in  such  measure  as  the 
degree  of  enlightenment  of  public  opinion  may  permit, 
to  associate  the  governed  in  the  task  of  government. 
Not  only  is  it  the  intention  of  His  Majesty's  Government 
to  remain  fnithful  to  such  policy,  but  they  are  convinced 
that  the  clearer  definition  of  Great  Britain's  position 
in  the  country  will  accelerate  progress  towards  self- 
government. 

The  religious  convictions  of  Egyptian  subjects  will 
be  scrupulously  respected,  as  are  those  of  His  Majesty's 
own  subjects,  whatever  their  creed.  Nor  need  I  affirm 
to  Your  Highness  that,  in  declaring  Egypt  free  from  any 
duty  of  obedience  to  those  who  have  usurped  political 
power  at  Constantinople,  His  Majesty's  Government  are 
animated  by  no  hostility  towards  the  Khaliphate.  The 
past 'history  of  Egypt  shows,  indeed,  that  the  loyaltj'  of 
Egyptian  Mohammedans  towards  the  Khaliphate  13 
independent  of  any  political  bond.s  between  Egypt  and 
Constantinople. 

The  strengthening  and  progress  of  Mohammedan 
institutions  in  Egypt  is  naturally  a  matter  in  which 
His  Majesty's  Government  take  a  deep  interest  and  with 
which  Your  Highness  will  bo  specially  concerned,  and 
in  carrying  out  sueh  reforms  as  may  be  considered 
necessary  Your  Highness  may  count  upon  the  sjTn- 
pathetio  support  of  His  Majesty's  Government. 

I  am  to  add  that  His  Majesty's  Government  rely  with 
confidence  upon  the  loyalty,  the  good  sense,  and  self- 
restraint  of  Egyptian  subjects  to  facilitate  the  task  of 
the  General  Officer  Commanding  His  Majesty's  Forces, 
who  is  entrusted  with  the  maintenance  of  internal  order. 
and  witli  the  pre\ention  of  the  rendering  of  aid  to  the 
enemy. 

T  avail  myself  of  this  opportimity  to  present  to  Your 
Highness  the  assurance  of  my  highest  respect. 

•  MILNE  Cheetham. 

December  19.  1914. 

On  Saturday,  December  19,  the  following 
proclamation  was  published  at  Cairo  : 

His  Britannic  Majesty's  Secretary  of  State  for  Foreign 
Affairs  gives  notice  that,  in  view  of  the  state  of  war 
arising  out  of  the  action  of  Turkey.  Egypt  is  placed  under 
the  Protection  of  His  Majesty  and  will  henceforth 
constitute  a  British  Protectorate. 

The  Suzerainty  of  Turkey  over  Egynt  is  thus  termi- 
nated, and  His  Majesty's  Government  will  adopt  ail 
measures  necessary  for  the  defence  of  Egypt,  and  protect 
its  inhabitants  and  interests. 

The  Proclamation  was  at  the  same  time 
published  in  all  the  provincial  centres.  Its 
reception  there  was  on  the  whole  good.  Many 
of  the  fellaheen  were  openly  though  undemon- 
Ktratively  plea.sed  by  what  they  believed  to  be 
a  guarantee  that  their  rights  would  be  resi^ected, 
that  they  would  get  their  water  without  having 
to  bribe  the  irrigation  officials,  and  that  the 
great  landlords  would  not  be  permitted  to 
oppress  them.  There  were  grumblers  in  the 
towns,  especially  in  Tanta,  always  a  centre  of 
fanaticism  from  pre-Islamic  days ;  some  of 
the  Beduin  notables  who  had  been  won  over 
by  Tm-kish  agents^  or  who  resented  the  British 


occupation,  which  pre\cnted  them  from  proyino; 
on  the  fellaheen  as  their  ancestors  had  been 
wont  to  do,  talked  trea.sonably  and  hinted  at 
an  impending  Turkish  invasion.  But  no 
demonstration  was  made  again-st  tlic  I'rotcc- 
torate  throughout  all  the  provinces  from 
Assuan  to  Behera.  In  Cairo  and  Alexandria 
there  was  more  discontent,  not  only  among 
the  ignorant  who  had  heard  wondrous  tales 
of  the  coming  of  "  Effendina  "  at  the  head  of 
the  Turkish  legions,  but  among  the  fairly 
numerous  class  of  extreme  Nationalists,  stu- 
dents, lawyers,  and  the  like,  some  of  whom 
donned  black  ties  as  a  sign  of  their  mourning. 
But  this  was  all ;  the  majority  of  the  population 
remained  good-temperedly  mdifferent  to  all 
that  was  happening.  "  Rather  more  than 
10  per  cent,  of  the  Egyptians  are  with  you, 
rather  less  than  10  per  cent,  against  you,  and 
the  remaining  80  per  cent,  do  not  really  care 
as  long  as  they  and  their  religion  are  left  alone," 
\\as  the  verdict  of  a  shrewd  Oriental 
observer,  and  as  far  as  Cairo  was  concerned 
he  was  probably  right,  though  the  pro-British 
forces  were  stronger,  and  hostile  elements 
weaker,  in  the  provinces. 

Thus  terminated  the  reign  of  Abbas  IT.  of 
Egj-pt.  In  Lord  Cromer's  words  he  had  "  pre- 
ferred to  throw  in  his  lot  with  the  enemies  of 
Great  Britain,  being  probably  vuider  the  im- 
pression that  he  was  joining  the  side  which 
would  be  ultimately  victorious  in  the  w  ar  now 
being  waged.  In  adopting  this  course  he  com- 
mitted political  suicide."  Yet  his  general 
unpopularity  with  the  best  elements  of  modem 
Egypt  and  with  the  peasantry,  the  abuses  which 
he  encouraged,  and  the  rather  squalid  domestic 
scandals  in  which  he  was  latterly  involved, 
would  probably  have  rendered  it  impossible  for 
him  permanently  to  retain  his  position.  Even 
those  who  disapprov  ed  of  his  deposition,  on  the 
ground  that,  as  a  Moslem  Viceroy  appointed  by 
the  Sultan  he  could  only  lawfully  be  deposed 
by  the  Sultan,  seldom  affected  to  admire  his 
character  or  his  methods. 

The  groups,  largely  composed  of  ignorant,  or. 
at  best,  half-educated  folk,  who  contiimed 
discreetly  to  espouse  his  cause  were  acttiated 
by  fear  of  his  return  at  the  head  of  the  Turkish 
Armies,  by  fanaticism,  or  by  self-interest.  The 
host  of  palace  officials  and  parasites  of  both 
sexes,  spies,  secret  agents,  and  other  creatures 
of  the  ex-ruler,  and  their  relatives,  who  had 
mostly  robbed  their  master  and  had  been 
permitted  by  him  to  rob  and  blackmail  others. 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAB. 


311 


BRITISH    TROOPS.  IN    EGYPT. 

1.  New  Zealand  men  at  work.  2.  East  Lancashire  Territorials  pontoon  making.  3.  Brigadier-General 
Briscoe,  in  command  of  the  Cavalry  Brigade,  with  the  members  of  his  staff.  4.  Australians  on  the 
trams.        5,    Cooks     preparing     dinner    at    the     Australians'     (]amp.        6.    New     Zealanders     at     their 

Christmas    Dinner. 


312 


thp:   times  histoby  of  the  war. 


WESTMINSTER  DRAGOONS    IN    EGYPT. 
No.  2.  Troop,  "C"  Squadron. 


were  naturally  most  genuine  in  their  professions 
of  regret,  for  Sultan  Hussein  would  have  none 
of  tliem,  and  dismissed  every  person  who  was 
in  the  Khedive's  employ.  With  some  of 
the  exalte  students,  especially  those  of  the 
]ja\v  School,  ever  a  centre  of  political  agitation, 
and  the  more  reactionary  Ulema  and  their 
disciples,  they  formed  what  might  have  de- 
veloped into  a  sort  of  Egyptian  "  Legitimist  " 
jjarty.  But  for  the  present  they  were  silent, 
because  they  feared.  The  Beduin  notables, 
with  few  exceptions,  had  already  descended 
with  their  usual  shrewdness  to  the  British  side 
of  the  fence.  As  for  the  fellaheen,  who  had 
no  cau.se  whatever  to  love  Abbas  Hilmi, 
"  itkassarit  sinunuh  "  (his  teeth  are  broken) 
was  their  most  frequent  comment,  when  they 
read  of  the  deposition  of  "  Effendina."  INIany 
of  the  members  of  the  Khedivial  family  who  had 
suffered  from  their  kinsman's  avarice  doubtle  s 
echoed  the  sentiments  of  the  fellaheen  in  more 
polished  language. 

His  successor,  Sultan  Hussein  Kamil,  was 
born  in  1853.  At  the  age  of  14  he  was  sent 
to  Paris  to  continue  his  education,  and  there 
\\  as  a  guest  at  the  court  of  Napoleon  III.  and 
the  playfellow  of  the  Prince  Imperial.  In 
1869  he  acted  as  Chamberlain  to  the  Empress 
Eugenie  at  the  magnificent  opening  of  the 
Suez  Canal,  and  retiu-ned  to  Egypt  in  1870. 
He  was  appointed  Inspector-General  of  the 
Delta  in  1872,  and  later  held  several  port- 
folios, showing  exceptional  energy  during  his 
tenure  of  the  Ministry  of  Public  Works,  notably 
in  the  great  flood  year  of  1874.     On  the  abdica- 


tion of  Ismail  Pasha  in  1878,  Prince  Hussein 
retired  to  Naples  with  his  father.  His  brother, 
Tewfik  Pasha,  was  reputed  to  be  jealous  of  him, 
and  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  Ismail  Pasha 
had  at  one  time  the  intention  of  altering  the 
order  of  succession  and  appointing  Hussein  as 
his  successor.  After  his  return,  he  for  long 
jDlayed  no  political  role,  but  was  able  to  render 
considerable  assistance  in  manj'  ways  to  the 
British  Occupation.  The  Khedivial  Agricul- 
tural Society  was  founded  by  him  in  1898,  and 
rendered  great  service  to  the  country.  Keenly 
interested  in  agriculture,  gardening,  and 
technical  and  industrial  education,  he  could 
spare  time  for  much  philanthropic  activity, 
especiallj-  in  his  capacity  as  president  of  the 
Cairo  First  Aid  Society.  In  1909  he  returned 
to  political  life  and  became  president  of  the 
Legislative  Council  and  General  Assembly.  He 
certainly  did  much  to  raise  the  tone  of  their 
debates,  finally  resigning  in  March,  1910,  when 
these  bodies,  inspired  by  the  Khedive  and  the 
extreme  Nationalists,  foolishly  rejected  the 
proposal  for  the  extension  of  the  Suez  Canal 
Concession.  Strongly  Anglophile,  and  at  the 
same  time  a  patriotic  Egj^ptian,  with  a  thorough 
knowledge  of,  and  liking  for,  the  fellaheen, 
whom  most  Turoo-Egyptians  were  inclined  to 
despize,  the  new  ruler  of  Egj'jit  was  the  anti- 
thesis of  his  nephew.  Honest,  open-handed  to 
a  fault,  proud,  yet  courteous  to  all,  and  gifted 
with  remarkable  personal  charm,  he  inherited 
the  best  qualities  of  his  father,  to  which  he  joined 
a  very  genuine  desire  for  the  betterment  of 
the  masses.     A  spare,  lithe-built  man  of  aristo- 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE    WAR. 


313 


cratic  Albanian  type,  with  a  manner  that  com- 
bined dignity  and  chann,  his  presence  was  that 
of  a  ruler.  In  religion  he  was  a  devout  and 
liberal  Moslem,  in  ethics  a  gentleman. 

The  first  official  act  of  the  Sultan  was  to 
address  the  following  rescript  to  Hussein 
Ruchdi  Pasha,  who,  with  the  other  members 
of  the  Cabinet,  had  resigned  as  soon  as  the 
deposition  of  the  Khedive,  from  whom  all 
Ministers  held  their  mandate,  had  been  offici- 
ally communicated  to  him : 

My  Deab  Ruchdi  Pasha, 

Recent  political  events  have  brought  about  the 
establishment  by  Great  Britain  of  her  Protectorate  over 
Egypt  and  the  vacancy  of  the  Khedivial  Throne. 

By  the  communication,  of  which  We  transmit  you  a 
copy  [the  reference  is  to  the  British  Government's 
communication  published  on  page  309],  to  be  brought 
to  the  knowledge  of  the  Egyptian  people,  the  Govern- 
ment of  His  Britannic  Majesty  has  appealed  to  Our 
devotion  to  Our  country  to  the  end  that  We  may  take 
the  Khedivate  of  Egypt  with  the  title  of  Sultan,  while 
the  Sultanate  furthermore  shall  be  hereditary  in  the 
family  of  INIohamed  Ali  following  an  order  of  succession 
to  be  determined. 

After  a  life  devoted  to  the  service  of  the  country,  We 
might  have  aspired  to  repose  :  nevertheless  We  consider 
it  Our  duty,  in  the  particularly  delicate  situation  of 
Egjrpt  which  these  events  have  created,  to  assume  this 
heavy  responsibility  and,  faithful  to  Our  past,  to  continue 
to  devote  Our  energies  to  the  service  of  the  Fatherland. 

This  We  owe  to  Egypt  and  to  Our  glorious  ancestor 
the  Great  Mohamed  Ali,  whose  dynasty  We  desire  to 
perpetuate.  In  Our  solicitude  for  the  interests  of  the 
country  We  shall  ever  seek  to  ensure  the  moral  and 
material  well-being  of  its  inhabitants  by  the  continuation 
of  the  programme  of  reforms  which  has  already  been 
commenced.  The  constant  care  of  Our  Government 
will  therefore  be  the  diffusion  and  the  perfecting  of 
education  in  all  its  stages,  the  good  administration  of 
justice,  and  its  organization  on  lines  more  appropriate 
to  the  actual  conditions  of  the  country  ;    it  will  devote 


the  most  vigilant  attention  to  qviestions  connected  with 
the  tranquillity  and  security  of  the  population,  and  will 
give   a   new   impulse   to   the   economic   development   of 

Egypt- 

As  regards  representative  institutions,  Our  aim  -will 
be  to  associate  the  governed  more  closely  with  the 
government  of  the  country. 

For  the  realization  of  this  programme  We  have  the 
assurance  that  We  shall  obtain  the  most  sympathetic 
support  from  the  Government  of  His  Britannic  Majesty, 
and  We  are  convinced  that  the  more  precise  definition 
of  the  situation  of  Great  Britain  in  Egypt,  by  dissipating 
all  causes  of  misunderstanding,  will  facilitate  the  col- 
laboration towards  a  common  end  of  all  the  political 
elements  in  the  country. 

For  the  task  that  awaits  Us,  We  count  on  the  loyal  aid 
of  all  Our  people. 

Knowing  your  experience  and  high  qualities.  We 
appeal  to  your  patriotism  in  demanding  your  aid  in  the 
accomplishment  of  this  task.  We  therefore  summon 
you  to  the  Presidency  of  Our  Council  of  Ministers  and 
invite  you  to  form  the  Cabinet  and  submit  to  Our  high 
approval  the  names  of  the  colleagues  whom  you  think 
fit  to  propose  to  Us. 

We  pray  the  Almighty  to  bless  Our  efforts  in  this 
patriotic  task.  Hussein  Kamix. 

Ruchdi  Pasha's  reply  admirably  summed  up 
his  attitude  and  that  of  his  patriotic  colleagues. 
After  thanking  His  Highness  for  the  honour 
conferred  upon  him,  he  continued  : 

Though  formerly  holding  office  in  virtue  of  a  mandate 
from  the  preceding  Sovereign,  I  am  above  all  an 
Egyptian,  and  I  consider  it  my  duty  as  an  Egyptian 
to  attempt  under  the  auspices  of  Your  Hie;hness  to 
.•serve  my  country,  the  higher  interests  of  which  have 
always  guided  me  and  have  now  proved  euperior  to 
personal  considerations. 

The  New  Ministry  was  thus  composed  : 

Hussein  Ruchdi  Pasha,  Premier  and  Interior. 

Adli  Yeghen  Pasha,  Agriculttire. 

Ismail  Sidki  Pasha,  Pious  Foundations. 

Ahmed  Hilmi  Pasha,  Education. 


AUSTRALIAN    ENGINEERS    BUILDING    PONTOON. 


su 


THE    TIMES    HlSTOllY    OF    THE    WAIl. 


THE    SULTAN    OF    EGVnT. 


[DOiricli. 


Ismail  Sirri  Pasha,  Public  ^^'orks. 

Yusuf  \^'ahba  Pasha,  Finance. 

Abdul  Khalik  Sarwat  Pasha,  Justice. 

The  only  member  of  the  former  Cabinet  who 
-did  not  resume  office  was  INIohamed  IMoheb 
Pasha,  the  former  ]Muiister  of  Pious  Founda- 
tions. This  was  accounted  for  by  the  abolition 
of  the  Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs  under  the 
British  Protectorate,  and  perhaps  by  the  favour 
wherewith  Abbas  Hilmi  was  said  to  regard  the 
ex-]Minister,  who  had  left  Egypt  for  Italy. 

On  the  day  of  his  accession  Sultan  Hussein 
received  the  following  telegram  from  Kmg 
George  : 

On  the  occasion  when  You»  Highness  fintcis  upon 
your  high  ofiSce  I  desire  to  convey  to  Your  Hijjhno^^  the 
expression  of  my  most  sincoro  friendship  and  the  aasur- 
ance  of  my  unfailing  support  in  safes uardine  tiiu  integrity 
r.f  Egypt  and  m  secuiing  her  futiue  wt-il-being  and 
prosperity. 

Youi  Highness  has  been  called  upon  to  undertake  the 
responsibilities  of  your  high  oflico  at  a  g»avc  ciisis  in  the 
national  life  of  Egypt,  and  I  feel  convjnccd  that  you  vviJi 
be  able,  with  ths  cooperation  of  jour  Ministers  and  the 
Protectorate  of  Great  Britain,  succestiu'Iy  to  oveicome 
all  the  influences  which  are  seeUing  to  destroy  the 
independence  of  Egypt  and  ths  wealth,  libeitj',  and 
happiness  of  its  people. 

Geobce  R.  and  I. 

The  Sultan  telegraphed  the  following  rt  ph' : 

To  H;s  Majesty  the  King,  London. 

I  present  to  You^  Majesty  the  expression  of  xny 
doepe.si  trntitude  for  tho  feeling.--  of  friendship  with 
which  you  see  fit  to  honour  me  and  for  the  assurance  of 
your  valuable  support  ia  safeguarding  tho  integrity  and 
•independence  of  Eg\-pt. 


Conifiou'?  of  thr-  respon^lbililie.-  T  have  ju^t  os'iimed. 
and  resolved  to  devote  myself,  in  entire  co(;peration 
with  the  Protectorate,  to  the  progress  and  welfare 
of  my  peop.e.  1  am  happy  to  be  able  to  count  in  this 
ta.-k  on  Your  llajesly's  protection  and  on  the  as.sistanco 
of  Your  Government. 

^L'SSEIN   KAsai.. 

On  December  20  the  Sultan  made  his  cere- 
monial entry  into  Abdin  Palace.  Not  a  single 
incident  marred  the  order  and  dignity  of  the 
{proceedings.  The  military  and  police  arrange- 
ments were  alike  admirable,  wliile  the  populace 
showed  a  good  humour  and  obedience  that 
rendered  the  task  of  the  authorities  an  easy 
one. 

At  half-past  nine  o'clock  the  booming  of 
tlie  first  of  the  twenty-one  gims  of  a  salute 
announced  that  the  Sultan  had  left  the  Palace 
of  Kamil-ed-Din.  As  the  cannon  sounded, 
the  troops  all  along  the  line  of  the  route  pre- 
sented arms — the  smart  Egyptian  cadets 
outside  the  Kamil-ed-Din  Palace,  the  long 
lines  of  the  East  Lancashire  Territorials,  who 
lined  the  route  up  the  street  past  the  Savoy 
Hotel,  the  tall  New  Zealanders  along  the 
Upper  Kasr-en-Nil  Road,  and  the  Sharia  ]\Iagh- 
raby  to  the  Opera  Square  near  the  Continental 
Hotel,  the  hard-bitten  Australians,  who  carried 
on  the  line  into  Abdin  Square,  where  the 
Ceylon  Planters'  Corps,  a  trim  contingent, 
were  ranged  between  the  Australians  and  the 
British  and  Egyptian  Guards  of  Honour.  The 
guns  boomed  slowly  from  the  Citadel,  and  the 


[DuinJi. 

THE    EX-KHEDIVE    OF    EGYPT. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WALL 


315 


Egj'ptian  and  European  onlookers  crowded 
forward  from  windows  and  balconies  as  the 
head  of  the  procession  came  into  view. 

First  rode  the  Vico-Commandant  of  the 
Cairo  PoHce,  then  a  squadron  of  Yeomanry 
moiuited  on  grey  Arabs,  next — a  bright  touch 
of  colour  amid  the  long  lines  of  dust-coloured 
khaki  and  drill — came  a  squadron  of  Egyptian 
T.ancers,  their  red  fezes  and  red  and  green 
lance  pennons  contrasting  with  the  blue  and 
white  of  their  tunics.  Behind  them  rode  the 
Cavalry  of  the  Bodyguard  in  black  and  dark 
blue,  and  then,  preceded  and  attended  by 
sj'ces  in  traditional  garb,  came  the  Sultan's 
State  carriage  drawn  ])y  four  magnificent 
white  horses,  the  scarlet  and  gold  liveries  of 
the  coaclimen  showing  l:)rilliantly  up  against 
the  white. 

The  Sultan,  with  the  Prime  Minister  on  his- 
left,  drove  slowly  past.  His  mien  was  dignified 
and  resolute.  The  slight  tilt  with  whicli  he 
wears  his  high  scarlet  Egyptian  fez  gave  his 
bearing  just  that  little  touch  of  panache 
that  endears  rulers  to  their  people,  otherwise 
he  was  soberly  but  perfectly  dressed.  As  he 
gravely  responded  to  the  applause  with  which 
the  people  greeted  him,  looking  full  in  the  faces 
of  the  crowd,  there  was  something  in  his 
aquiline  features  and  aristocratic  bearing  that 
reminded  one  of  the  proud  Skipetars,  the  Folk 
of  the  Eagle,  of  those  Albanian  hills  whence 
came  his  great  ancestor. 


Egyptians,  like  other  Orientals,  cheer  but 
little,  but  all  along  the  route,  swelUng  louder 
and  louder  above  the  strains  of  the  Khedivial 
Anthem,  sounded  the  clapping  of  thousands 
of  hands.  The  streets  were  bright  with  flags, 
among  which  flashed  most  conspicuously  of 
all  the  scarlet  Khedivial  Banner,  with  its 
three  white  crescents  and  tliree  stars.  The 
Ministers  followed  the  State  coach,  then  rode  a 
fine  squadron  of  yeomanry  mounted  on  English 
horses.  Next  came,  accompanied  by  kavasses 
in  Pcark't,  tiie  carriages  of  the  Acting  British 
Higli  Commissioner,  the  Agency  Staff,  and  last 
of  all,  hieutenant-General  Sir  John  Maxwell. 

A  great  multitude  of  dignitaries  and  notables, 
mostly  from  the  provmces,  assembled  in  a  great 
marquee  in  Abdin  Square,  cheered  and  ap- 
jjlauded  the  Sultan  as  the  procession  moved 
up  to  the  entrance  to  the  Palace.  As  he 
ent(;red  its  doors  he  turned  and  saluted  his 
subjects.  A  moment  later  the  sky,  which  had 
till  then  been  overcast,  brightened  suddenly, 
and  the  sun  which  Ancient  Egypt  had  wor- 
shipped shone  out.  Thus  Sultan  Hussein 
entered  his  palace  with  favoiu^able  omens. 

A  reception  which  lasted  over  six  hours 
followed.  During  it  the  Egj-ptian  troops, 
whose  officers,  Egyptian  and  British,  had  taken 
the  oath  to  the  new  ruler,  acclaimed  Sultan 
Hussein.  In  the  coiu"se  of  the  reception  His 
Highness  addressed  advice  on  agricultural 
and  financial  matters   to  the   provincial   dele- 


THE    SULTAN    ARRIVING    AT    HIS    RESIDENCE    IN    HELIOPOLIS. 


316 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


gations,  depre<"a(6>d  n-ligioiis  (jiiurreLs,  and 
urged  the  notables  of  Gharbia  province  in 
particular  to  use  their  influence  to  put  an  end 
to  the  family  feuds,  wliicl^i  are  the  principal 
cause  of  crime  in  Egypt,  ile  admonished  the 
iJeduin  Sheikhs  of  Fayum,  warning  them  that 
they  must  remember  that  they  dwelt  in  a 
civilized  country,  and  must,  therefore,  submit 
to  ordered  rule.  Those  who  preferred  lawless 
"  desert "  conditions  of  existence  had  best 
leave  the  country. 

It  was  noted  that  Sir  Milne  Cheetham, 
the  Acting  High  Commissioner,  was  accorded 
an  enthusiastic  recejjtion  by  the  crowd  when 
arriving  at  and  departing  from  Abdin. 

At  nightfall  the  whole  of  Cairo  was  brilliantly 
illuminated.  Thus  closed  three  of  the  most 
eventful  days  in  the  history  of  modem  Egypt. 

During  this  period  the  Sudan  had  been 
absolutely  quiet,  to  the  relief  and  perhaps 
to  the  surprise  of  the  British  Military  autho- 
rities. This  huge  country  of  nearly  a  million 
square  miles  in  extent,  peopled  largely  by 
Moslems  who  had  been  conquered  by  Lord 
Ivitchener  only  sixteen  years  before,  and  were 
among  the  bravest  and  most  fanatical  of 
African  races,  was  jointly  governed  by  Great 
Britain  and  Egypt  with  a  comparatively  small 
garrison  which  included  few  white  troops. 
1'he  religious  fervour  of  large  elements  of, the 


population  excused  and  explained  tlie  fear 
that  the  action  of  Turkey  might  stir  up  the 
tribes  to  ri.se.  It  was  largely  owing  to  the 
action  of  the  Governor-General  of  the  Sudan, 
Sir  Reginald  Wingate,  and  of  the  many  able 
officers  under  his  control  that  the  Ashole 
country  was  not  only  quiet  but  loyal,  and  that 
the  entire  population  supported  the  British 
cause.  Returning  immediately  after  the  out- 
break of  the  Great  War  to  Egypt,  Sir  Reginald, 
who  was  also  the  Sirdar  (Commander-in-Chief) 
of  the  Egyptian  Army,  spent  some  time  at 
Cairo,  and  after  satisfying  himself  that  the 
spirit  of  the  f]gyptian  Army  was  good,  went 
south  to  Khartum,  \shere  he  held  many 
informal  meetings  with  the  senior  Egyptian 
officers  and  the  chief  local  notables.  After 
this  he  held  a  huge  public  reception  at  Omdur- 
nian,  where  he  addressed  the  religious  leaders 
of  the  people  in  Arabic,  fully  explaining  the 
origin  and  causes  of  the  war  witli  Germany. 
The  speech  was  loyally  acclaimed,  and  from  that 
moment  there  was  no  doubt  of  the  feeling  of 
the  leaders  of  the  Sudanese  peoples.  The 
Governor -General  afterwards  made  a  rapid 
tour  of  the  Sudan,  and  held  receptions  at  the 
chief  towns  of  the  Sudan,  always  with  the 
same  excellent  results.  It  was  made  clear 
by  him  and  his  chief  subordinates  to  the 
notables  in  private  con\ersations  that  Turkey 


««l«il#t}H|J' 


^  liUJ  '^^  Jii 

|«Att:litl|ll   |,,||^  1:18  8 


THE    SULTAN'S    ENTRY— ABDIN    SQUARE. 
Yeomanry  leading  procession  :  Ceylon  Infantry  :  Egyptian  Guard  of  Honour  on  the  right. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


31? 


INDIANS    WOUNDED    AT    SUEZ    CANAL    ARRIVING    IN    CAIRO. 


was  drifting  towards  war.  When  war  broke 
out  with  the  Porte  the  ground  had  been  well 
prepared,  and  the  people  were  not  wholly 
taken  by  surprise.  On  November  7  fifty  of 
the  leading  regimental  officers,  British  and 
Egyptian,  were  suiximoned  to  the  palace  at 
Khartum,  where  the  Governor-General  ad- 
dressed them,  and,  after  briefly  explaining  what 
had  happened,  read  a  proclamation  announcing 
that  a  state  of  war  between  Great  Britain  and 
Turkey  existed  as  from  that  day,  and  calling 
on  the  inhabitants  of  the  Sudan  to  render 
all  the  assistance  that  might  be  required  of  them 
to  the  British,  Egyptian,  and  Sudanese  forces. 
A  similar  procedure  was  adopted  in  all  the 
principal  garrison  towns  by  the  Governors 
or  Commandants  at  the  same  moment.  On  the 
following  day  the  principal  religious  Sheikhs 
and  Ulema  were  assembled,  when  the  Governor- 
General  addressed  thorn,  informing  them  that 
he  was  about  to  call  upon  the  Grand  Mufti 
to  read  them  an  address  from  him,  and  ex- 
pressing his  confidence  that  as  enlightened  and 
patriotic  men  they  woxild  explain  the  truth 
and  give  good  counsel  to  the  people.  The 
Grand  Mufti  then  read  an  address  in  Arabic, 
in  which,  after  recapitulating  the  benefits 
the  British  had  wrought  in  the  Sudan,  he 
declared  that  this  war  had  been  unsought  by 
Great  Britain,  but  forced  on  her  by  the  madness 
of  "  this  syndicate  of  Jews,  financiers,  and  low- 
born intriguers,   like  broken  gamblers  staking 


their  last  coin,  and  in  deference  to  the  urgent 
demands  of  Germany  and  our  enemies,  who 
have  gone  to  war  with  the  one  Power  who  by 
her  actions  and  the  sentiments  of  her  people 
has  ever  been  a  true  and  sympathetic  friend 
to  the  Moslems  and  to  Islam." 

Great  Britain  had  no  quarrel  with  Islam  or 
its  spiritual  leaders.  She  would  ever  maintain 
and  enforce  on  others  the  sanctity  and  inviola- 
bihty  of  the  Holy  Places.  They  need  not 
fear  that  the  war  would  affect  the  situation 
of  Islam  in  the  world.  Their  fears  were 
groundless,  for  the  British  Empire  would  not 
change  the  position  of  a  single  Moslem  subject 
for  the  worse,  or  repudiate  a  singje  pri\ilege 
granted  to  its  Moslems. 

The  Ulema  were  most  enthusiastic  and 
pubUcly  protested  their  loyalty.  Prominent 
among  them  was  Sherif  Yusef  El  Hindi,  a 
descendant  of  the  Prophet,  who  had  enormous 
influence  in  the  Sudan,  and  the  eldest  son  of 
the  Mahdi,  who  vouched  for  the  fidelity  of  all 
cx-Mahdists.  The  Ulema  afterwards  pro- 
duced an  admirable  manifesto,  signed  by 
sixteen  of  their  cliiefs.  The  popular  response 
was  extraordinary.  From  all  sides  letters 
and  telegrams  promising  support  reached  the 
Sirdar,  and  the  Egyptian  officers  made  similar 
representations.  Generous  gifts  were  made  to 
the  Prince  of  Wales's  Eimd.  Nor  did  the 
attempts  of  Turkish  agents  to  excite  the  people 
meet    with    the    slightest    succa«»s.     A    typical 


m 


THP.     TIMES    BISTOBY    OF    THE    WAtt. 


SLATIN    PASHA. 


[Lekegian. 


example  of  their  failures  was  the  case  of  Elmaz 
Bey,  Enver  Pasha's  aide-de-camp  and  creatm'e, 
an  ignorant  black,  who  had  formerly  served  in 
the  Egyptian  Coastguards,  joined  the  Turks 
in  Cyrenaica,  and  had  done  his  utmost  to 
perjure  away  the  hfe  of  Aziz  el  Masri. 
Girt  with  a  lengthy  sabre  and  clad  in  Turkish 
uniform  this  witless  blackamoor  landed  near 
Port  Sudan  in  fuU  view  of  the  Coastguards, 
and  repaired  to  some  Arab  tents,  whence  he 
made  his  way  in  disguise  to  the  oflficers'  quarters 
of  an  Egyptian  battalion.  He  called  on  the 
officers  to  revolt.  They  promptly  arrested  him, 
and  he  was  sentenced  to  death  after  trial  by 
court-martial,  his  sentence  being  afterwards 
commuted  in  consequence  of  the  disclosures 
he  made. 

The  Sudan  suffered  one  serious  loss  through 
the  war.  Sir  Rudolph  von  Slatin,  the  Austrian 
officer,  who  had  been  for  many  years  a  Mahdist 
prisoner,  and  after  his  rescue  by  the  Sirdar  had 
done  admirable  service  to  England  and  Egypt  in 
the  country  where  he  had  been  a  captive, 
felt  himself  compelled  to  se\'er  his  cormexion 
with  the  service.  His  motives  in  so  doing  were 
creditable  to  his  patriotism  as  a  good  subject 
of  the  Emperor  Francis  Joseph,  and  were 
misimderstood  by  none  of  his  old  colleagues, 
least  of  all  by  his  old  friend  the  Sirdar. 

Such  was  the  history  of  the  Sudan  for  the 
first  seven  months  of  the  war.     British  officers 


stationed  there  regarded  the  loyalty  and  calm 
of  its  tribes  as  "  little  short  of  miraculous," 
and  the  Sudan  Tiinefi  truly  said  that  what- 
ever loss  or  mihcry  the  war  might  have  brought 
to  the  world,  it  had  at  least  given  the  British 
a  proof  such  as  would  never  otherwise  have 
come  to  light  that  their  work  in  the  Sudan  had 
not  been  in  vain. 

On  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  with  Turkey  tlie 
.^lied  warships  in  the  Southern  Levant  and  in 
the  Red  Sea  received  orders  to  observe  hostile 
ports  and  to  prevent  any  smuggling  or  fili- 
bustering expeditions  that  might  be  attempted, 
especially  from  the  coast  of  Arabia.  Details 
concerning  the  activity  of  these  warships,  main- 
ly British,  on  the  coast  of  Syria  can  be  more 
profitably  given  when  the  Turkish  campaign 
against  Egypt  can  be  fully  described.  In  the 
Red  Sea  an  Indian  expedition  on  its  way  to 
Egypt  pluckUy  effected  the  reduction  of  the 
Turkish  fort  at  Sheikh  Said  on  the  mainland 
near  Aden.  A  landing  party  covered  by  H.M.S. 
Duke  of  Edinburgh  captured  a  considerable 
quantity  of  war  material  with  a  loss  of  three 
killed  and  a  few  wounded. 

On  November  5  H.M.  cruiser  Minerva, 
which  had  observed  Akaba  during  the  Anglo - 
Turkish  dispute  of  1906,  appeared  before  the 
town  and  demazaded  the  surrender  of  the  fort. 
Though  there  were  not  more  than  seventy  or 
eighty  armed  men  in  the  place,  mostly  Arabs 
with  a  few  gendarmes,  the  Turks  refused,  and 
the  fort  and  Government  buildings  were 
consequently  destroyed  by  the  cruiser,  assisted 
by  the  destroyers  Savage  and  Scourge.  A 
landing  party  exchanged  some  shots  with  the 
enemy  in  the  Wadi  Ithm,  but  suffered  no 
casualties.  After  this  a  close  watch  was  kept 
on  Akaba  till  the  end  of  the  year.  Shells  were 
fired  at  parties  of  Turks  who  showed  themselves 
near  the  beach,  and  on  one  occasion  a  landing 
party  drove  a  small  body  out  of  a  trench, 
suffering  three  and  inflicting  seven  or  eight 
casualties.  The  IVIinerva  was  once  forced  to 
shift  her  anchorage  owing  to  the  fire  of  a  con- 
cealed field-gun,  which  dropped  shells  near 
her,  and  on  another  occasion  had  a  man  killed 
on  board  by  snipers.  Nothing  of  note,  how- 
evev,  occurred  till  the  year's  end. 

After  the  first  invasion  of  Egyptian  territory 
by  Beduins  on  October  28,  the  remaining 
Anglo -Egyptian  posts  were  withdrawn  from 
the  Sinai  Peninsula  to  the  Canal.  Fort  Nakhl 
was  evacuated,  the  cistern  blown  up,  and 
certain  buildings  destroyed.     Several  rock  wells 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


311 


which  might  have  been  of  service  to  an  invading 
force  were  blo\\n  in  with  ch'namite.  The 
Egj^ptian  officials  ^\•ere  withdrawn  from  El 
Arish  \\ithout  incident  and  tlie  inajority  of  the 
nomad  Arabs  of  the  desert  of  Et-Tih  repaired 
with  their  flocks  and  herds  to  the  mountainous 
countrj'  south  of  the  Akaba-Nakhl  road.  The 
first  raiding  party  which  had  crossed  the  border 
seems  to  have  returned  after  stealing  a  few 
camels,  but  in  the  second  week  of  November  a 
force  of  Terabin  Bednins  from  south-west 
Palestine  accompanied  by  a  few  Turkish  and 
German  officers  occuj>ied  El  Arish,  and  after- 
wards ad^  anced  towards  Katia.  Save  for  the 
exchange  of  a  few  shots  between  Beduin  scouts 
and  Eg\'ptian  Coastguard  patrols  no  en- 
counters took  place  till  November  21.  On 
that  morning  an  Egyptian  patrol  composed  of 
twenty  Sudanese  camelmen  was  surprised 
while  encamped  east  of  Bir-en-Nuss,  and 
captured  to  a  man.  Captain  Chope,  of  the 
Bikanir  Camel  Corps,  and  an  Egj-ptian  officer, 
Lieutenant  Anis,  with  a  patrol  of  twenty  men 
of  the  Bikanir  Camel  Corps,  pushing  eastward 
to  gain  touch  with  the  Coastguards,  found  their 
camp    empty.     An    hour's    ride    fui'ther    east 


Captain  Chope  ?aw  ahead  of  him  a  pa.rty  of 
twenty  men  mounted  on  white  camels,  waving 
white  flags.  Thinking  they  were  the  missing 
Egyptians  he  let  them  approach.  AA'ithin  th  irty 
yards  the  Bedains  raised  their  rifles  and  were 
promptly  shot  down  almost  to  a  man  by  the 
Bikanirs,  who  similarly  disposed  of  another 
party  \\hich  attempted  to  attack.  Captain 
Chope  then  ad\'anced  towards  Katia,  when 
suddenly  150  hoi'semen  \\ere  observed  trying 
to  move  rovmd  his  right  flank,  while  a  like 
number  tried  to  turn  his  left.  He  therefore 
fell  back  fighting,  but  ■\\  as  hard  pressed  by  the 
mounted  men,  who  kept  up  a  hot  fire  from 
the  saddle  but  durst  not  close  with  the  plucky 
Bikanirs,  who  shot  straight  and  fought  the 
enemy  off  till  they  reached  their  supports.  Only 
five  of  them  were  then  unwoiuided,  with  Captain 
Chope,  who  had  a  narrow  escape,  having  his 
water-bottle  pierced  and  his  sword  hilt  shivered 
by  bullets,  while  his  camel  was  wounded  in 
the  hump  by  a  ball  froni  a  INIartini.  The 
Egyptian  officer  lieutenant  Anis  and  Subadar 
Abdu  Tvhan  were  killed,  with  ten  of  the  Bikanir 
men.  Tliree  of  the  latter  came  in  wounded 
and  two  more  wounded  men  were  afterwards 


AIN    MUSA    WELL,    SINAI,    NEAR    SUEZ. 
The  enemy's  scouts   reached  this  point. 


320 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


t'^i.^-J-hr 


'-^^-*^*%^ 


A'  'A  ^* 


A    TURKISH    HYDROPLANE. 


picked  up  by  a  patrol.  One  of  them  had  a 
narrow  escape  from  tho  enemy,  who  slashed 
at  liim  as  he  lay,  wounding  him  severely  but 
not  fatally  in  the  neck.  Of  the  Beduins  over 
fifty,  including  the  brother  of  the  Tarabin 
chief,     Sheikh     Sufi,    were    killed    and    many 


wounded.  Tactically  the  enemy  had  had 
the  best  of  the  skirmish,  but  the  moral  effect  of 
the  resistance  of  the  gallant  Indian  soldiers 
was  such  that  the  raiders  immediately  fell 
back  on  Katia,  and  made  no  forward  movement 
towards  the  Canal  for  nearly  six  weeks. 


CHAPTER  LIX. 


THE  GERMAN  FAILURE  IN  POLAND. 


The  Austro-German  Objective  in  Poland — The  Polish  Question — German  Temptations 
AND  Appeals — Polish  Solidarity — The  First  German  Advance — Danger  to  Warsaw — 
Russian  Reinforcements  and  German  Retreat — Iwangorod — Defeat  of  the  Austrians — 
Battle  of  Kielce — Austrian  Advance  in  Gax,icia — Causes  of  Austro-German  Failure — 
Second  German  Offensive  in  Poland — A  Success  at  Kutno — Capture  of  Lodz — Russian 
Move    on   Cracow — Fighting   in   the   Carpathians — The   Situation   at  the    P]nd    of    1914. 


IN  Chapter  LVII.  we  saw  the  conclusion,  in 
the  last  days  of  September,  1914,  of  the  first 
Galician  campaign,  when  the  Russians  had 
not  only  successfully  beaten  off  the  Austrian 
offensive  at  all  points,  but  had  swept  the  enemy 
back  over  his  own  borders,  and  had  almost 
driven  him  out  of  the  whole  Province  of  Galicia. 
From  the  north,  down  the  Vistula  and  across 
the  San,  from  the  east  by  Rawa-Ruska,  past 
Lemberg  and  Jaroslau,  and  along  the  right 
bank  of  the  Dniester,  the  Russian  armies 
under  Ruzsky,  Ivanoff,  Brusiloff,  and  Dmitrieff 
had  forced  the  Austrians  from  one  position 
after  another  until,  beaten  and  temporarily 
demoralized,  having  lost  in  killed,  wounded,  and 
prisoners  not  much  less  than  half  a  million  men, 
the  armies  of  von  Auffenberg,  Dankl,  and 
the  Archduke  Joseph  Ferdinand  were  herded 
together  in  western  Galicia,  beyond  the  river 
Wisloka,  and  under  the  protection  of  the  guns 
of  Cracow.  Przemysl  still  held  out  and  was 
not  to  fall,  under  circumstances  which  have 
been  described,  until  six  months  later.  Mean- 
while the  victorious  Russian  cavalry  was 
scouring  the  covmtry  to  the  southward  up  to 
the  very  foothills  of  the  Carpathians  and  in 
places  penetrating  into  the  moxuitain  pavsses 
themselves.  In  the  later  phases  of  these  opera- 
Vol.  TIL— Part  .3.5  321 


tions  some,  at  least,  of  the  Austrian  armies  had 
been  reinforced  by  a  greater  or  lesser  niunber 
of  German  divisions,  which  had  been  powerless 
to  avert  or  materially  mitigate  the  catastrophe. 
The  first  month  of  the  war  on  this  part  of  the 
eastern  front  had  ended  in  the  humiliation  of 
Austria,  while  the  Russians  had  shown  a  quick- 
ness of  movement,  a  vigour  both  in  strategy 
and  in  offensive  and  a  fighting  spirit  which  had 
surprised  even  their  friends.  In  the  la,«t  week 
of  September  the  Russian  advance,  after 
tremendous  and  almost  incredible  exertions, 
had  spent  itself,  its  immediate  objective 
achieved,  in  a  momentary  exhaustion  and 
satiety  of  triiunph.  For  a  few  days  the  tide 
stood  at  flood. 

On  Septenaber  27  began  the  first  movement 
of  an  Austro-German  coimtor-offensive. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  dwell  again  at  any 
length  on  the  contour  and  strategical  impor- 
tance of  Poland,  which  have  already  been 
discussed.  It  will  be  sufficient  to  repeat  that, 
thrust  out  like  a  wedge  between  the  territories 
of  the  two  empires,  it  was  equally  exposed  to 
attack  from  the  Germans  on  the  north  and 
from  Austria  on  the  south.  On  the  other  hand, 
so  long  as  it  remained  Russian — especially  as 
long  as  the  great  fortified  positions  of  Warsaw 


322 


THI'!     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


Novo  Georgievsk,  Iwangorod  and  Loinza,  with 
their  connecting  railway  lines,  remained  in 
Russian  hands — neither  on  the  north  nor  on  the 
south  could  any  effective  invasion  of  Russia 
be  attempted  without  evident  danger  of  attack 
from  the  rear.  The  first  object  aimed  at,  then, 
in  the  Anstro-CJerman  plans  had  been  the 
reduction  of  Poland — its  isolation  and  lopping 
off  from  the  main  body  of  Russia.  If  the  first 
operations  on  the  north  by  the  Germans  from 
East  Prussia  and  on  the  south  by  the  Austrians 
from  Galicia  had  succeeded,  the  allied  armies 
would  have  made  junction  somewhere  in  the 
Brest -Litovsk-Bialystok  region,  and,  with  all 
Poland  in  their  liands,  they  would  have  had  a 
continuous  front  on  a  straight  line  from  the 
Baltic  to  the  Carpathians  as  a  base  for  further 
advances. 

But  these  operations  did  not  succeed.  They 
failed  in  the  north  and  failed  disastrously  in 
the  south.  With  both  her  right  and  left  hands 
Russia  held  her  enemies  at  bay.  The  next 
move  of  the  allies,  then,  inevitably  took  the 
form  of  a  direct  thrust  in  the  centre  at  the 
heart  of  Poland.  In  their  first  operations  the 
Central  Powers  had  hoped  that  such  a  direct 
thrust  would  be  unnecessary.  It  would  have 
been  much  smipler  and  less  costly  if  Poland 
could  be  caused  to  drop  in  their  hands,  like  a 
branch  falling  from  a  tree,  by  cutting  through 
its  junction  with  the  trunk  from  which  it  grew. 
And  the  German  General  Stai¥  professed,  at 
least,  the  belief  that  Poland  would  rejoice  to  be 
so  severed,  and  Germans  and  Austrians  alike 
proclaimed  that  the  Polish  people  would  seize 
the  opportunity  offered  by  the  war  to  rise 
against  Russia,  and  would  welcome  the 
invaders  as  the  instriunents  of  their  salvation. 

The  alternative  which  confronted  Poland 
was,  indeed,  a  terrible  and  testing  one.  To 
hold  true  to  Russia  and  resist  invasion  could 
only  mean  the  desolation  of  the  land.  The 
country  must  be  overrun  by  hostile  armies 
and  become  one  vast  battlefield.  If  they  had  con- 
sulted their  immediate  material  interests  alone, 
the  Poles  must  have  thrown  themselves  into 
Germany's  arms.  It  was,  in  fact,  the  same 
dilemma  as  Belgium  had  had  to  face  in  the 
west,  and,  like  the  Belgians,  the  Poles  chose 
the  nobler  part. 

How  far  either  Germans  or  Austrians  really 
believed  in  the  probability^  of  Polish  friendship 
for  their  cause  it  is  difficult  to  say.  Evidence 
is  very  contradictory.  It  is  certain  that  up  to 
ithat  time  neither  Germans  nor  Austrians  had 


been  under  much  misapprehension  as  to  the 
Polish  dislike  of  themselves.  As  recently  as 
two  years  before,  when  the  Balkan  War  was  in 
progress,  Vienna  had  been  unable  to  conceal  its 
fears  of  a  Polish  rising.  In  the  history  of  Poland 
hostility  to  the  Prussian  and  the  Teuton  had 
been  an  infinitely  greater  factor  than  hostility 
to  Russia.  The  former  went  back  for  over  a 
thousand  years.  Compared  with  it  the  century- 
and-a-half-old  fear  of  Russia  was  a  modem 
thing.  As  has  been  noted  in  a  former  chapter, 
moreover,  since  the  partition  of  the  kingdom  of 
Poland,  the  treatment  of  their  section  of  the 
Polish  people  by  the  Germans  had  been  in- 
finitely more  ruthless  and  brutal  than  anything 
that  had  been  done  by  Russia.  If  of  late  years 
the  world  had  heard  more  of  the  struggles  of 
the  Poles  against  Russia  than  against  Germany, 
it  was  only  because  Germany  had  long  crushed 
out  the  power  to  struggle.  A  wounded  thing 
still  fighting  for  its  life  makes  more  noise  than 
one  which  has  already  been  beaten  to  un- 
consciousness and  is  on  the  point  of  death. 

It  is  impossible  not  to  believe  that  well- 
informed  people  in  Germany  must  have  known 
that  the  Poles  hated  them  more  deejjly  than 
ever  they  had  hated  Russia,  and  with  good 
reason.  The  German  people,  as  a  whole, 
however,  habitually  showed  singular  obtuse- 
ness  and  ignorance  in  all  discussions  of  the 
Polish  question.  The  masses  had  but  hazy 
ideas  on  the  subject,  and  they  were  extremely 
willing,  when  this  war  began,  to  believe  what 
they  wished  to  believe.  As  for  those  who 
knew  better,  for  the  Austro-German  Govern- 
ments and  General  Staffs,  the  friendship  of 
the  Poles  was  a  stake  worth  making  a  bid  for. 
If  it  was  to  be  won  it  must  obviously  be  the 
best  policy  to  pretend  that  it  was  expected. 
Everything  possible,  then,  was  done  to  create 
an  atmosphere  favourable  to  a  Polish  rapproche- 
ment. Both  Germany  and  Austria  declared 
their  confidence  in  the  Polish  goodwill  towards 
themselves,  and  both  were  lavish  of  promises 
and  proclamations  explaining  how  they  came 
against  Russia  as  the  deliverers  of  Poland. 
It  was  not  by  accident  that  the  Bishopric 
of  Posen,  which  the  Prussian  Government  for 
many  years  had  ostentatiously  kept  vacant, 
was  filled  by  the  appointment  of  a  Polish 
Bishop  immediately  after  the  outbreak  of  the 
war. 

A  characteristic  German  proclamation,  typical 
of  several  issued  during  the  present  invasion  of 
Poland,    was    promulgated    by    General    von 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


RUSSIAN    RESERVIST    LEAVING    FOR    THE    FRONT. 


Morgen,    in    command    of    the    German    First 
Army,  which  advanced  on  Warsaw  : 

Inhabitants  of  the  Governments  of  Lomza  and  War- 
saw !  The  Russian  Narew  Army  is  annihilated.  More 
than  100,000  men,  with  the  commanding  generals  of  t}ie 
13th  and  15th  Army  Corps,  are  prisoners  ;  300  guns  are 
captured.  The  Russian  army  under  General  Rennen- 
kampf  is  retreating  in  an  easterly  direction.  The  Aus- 
trian armies  are  victoriovisly  advancing  from  Gahcia. 
The  French  and  British  troops  in  France  have  met  witli 
disastrous  defeat.  Belgium  is  now  midor  Gorman 
a<l  ministration. 

I  come  to  you  with  the  advance<l  armies  of  other  Ger- 
man armies  and  as  your  friend.  Take  up  j'our  arms  ; 
expel  the  Russian  barbarians,  who  enslaved  you,  from 
your  beautiful  country,  which  sluall  regain  once  more  its 


political  and  religious  freedom.  That  is  the  will  of  my 
mighty  and  gracious  Emperor.  My  troops  have  orders 
to  treat  you  as  friends.  We  will  pay  for  what  you  sell 
us.  I  look  to  your  chivalry  to  receive  us  hospitably  as 
your  allies. 

(Signed)     Likutenant-Generai.  vdv  Morgen. 
In  the  Kingdcyn  of  I'oland.  September,  1914. 

That  the  game  was  worth  playing  is  shown 
by  the  fact  that  well-informed  Russians  were 
by  no  means  unanimous  in  their  confidencc  in 
Polish  loyalty.  German  emissaries  had,  of 
course,  been  secretly  at  work  in  Poland,  as 
elsewhere,  long  before  the  outbreak  of  the  war. 
That    their    labours    had   not   been   altogether 


324 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


fruitless  is  shown  by  the  reference  to  "  certain 
Polish  organizations  "  in  the  following  utter- 
ance of  the  chief  organ  of  Polish  political  opinion 
soon  after  the  commencement  of  hostilities  : 

Fellow-countrymen  !  A  danger  threatens  us,  greatest, 
perhaps,  among  the  many  calamities  which  war  brings 
to  a  country  :  the  misdirection  of  the  Nation's  mind  and 
understanding. 

Various  instigations  are  pressing  the  Poles  to  go 
against  their  own  instinct  and  the  dictates  of  political 
reason  in  their  attitude  towards  the  armies  now  invading 
our  Polish  lands,  armies  ringing  with  German  words  of 
command,  which  even  resound  through  Galician  detach- 
ments lured  into  belief  that  Poland  may  be  saved  through 
alliance  with  the  Germans.  Various  agitators  on  both 
the  German  and  Austrian  sides,  having  their  own  in- 
terests at  stake,  are  seeking  to  make  our  people  take 
active  part  in  the  terrific  conflicts  now  to  be  fought  out 
upon  our  soil. 

To  attain  this  end  by  throwing  dust  into  our  eyes, 
various  manifestoes  signed  by  the  leaders  of  the  armies 


beyond  the  frontier,  have  promised  the  Poles  extensive 
liberties  and  privileges  at  the  close  of  the  war.  Certain 
Polish  organizations,  having  lost,  in  the  general 
excitement,  their  healthy  sense  of  judgment,  are  doing 
likewise.  Do  not  let  yourselves  be  hoodwinked  by  these 
promises.  They  are  lies.  Neither  of  the  invading 
armies  has  any  intention  of  fighting  for  Poland's  sake. 
Each  is  fighting  in  the  interests  of  it.s  own  Empire,  and 
to  those  Empires  we  are  of  no  account.  They  only  want, 
in  a  moment  of  necessity,  to  make  the  Poles  pa-ssive 
instruments  serving  their  own  ends.  Whoever  tells  you 
that  Austria  in  alliance  with  Prussia  intends  to  build  up 
Poland  once  again  is  a  blinded  dreamer.  The  result  of 
a  victory  for  the  Germans  and  Austrians  would  mean  a 
new  partitioning  of  Poland,  a  yet  greater  wreckage  of 
our  Nation.  Grasp  this,  listen  to  no  seducers.  Remain 
passive,  watchful,  in.sensible  to  temptation. 

During  the  coming  struggle  the  Kingdom  of  Poland 
will  be  the  marching-ground  of  vaiious  armies,  we  shall 
see  temporary  victors  assum.ing  lordship  for  a  while  ; 
but  change  of  authority  will  follow,  and  inevitable 
retaliation  ;  this  several  time^,  perhaps,  in  the  course  of 
the  campaign.  Therefore  every  improvident  step  will 
meei  with  terrible  revenge.  By  holding  firm  through 
the  present  conflict  you  best  can  serve  the  Polish  cause, 
in  the  name  of  the  love  you  bear  your  country,  of  your 
solicitude  for  the  Nation's  future,  we  entreat  you,  fellov/- 
3ountrymen,  to  remain  deaf  to  evil  inspirations,  unshak- 
able in  your  determination  not  to  expose  our  land  to  yet 
greater  calamities,  and  Poland's  whole  future  to  incal- 
culable perils. — From  the  Gazeta  Warszaws'<a,  Aug.  1.5, 
1914. 

If  this  shows  that  Austro-German  intrigue 
had  not  been  all  barren  of  result,  it  also  shows 
even  more  clearly  that  the  intelligence  of  the 
leaders  of  the  Polish  people  was  unclouded. 
There  was  here  no  ringing  appeal  in  behalf  of 
loyalty  to  Russia — that  would  have  been  diffi- 
cult to  make — but  there  spoke  clearly  the  voice 
of  the  ages-long  hatred  of  the  Teuton  which 


NEW    POLISH    LEGION    FIGHTING    FOR    THE    TSAR. 
The  mascot  of  the  Infantry  of  peasants.      Cavalry  of  young  noblemen  drawn  up  lor  inspection. 


THE    TIMES    HlSTOnY    OF    THE    WAB. 


325 


made  a  popular  rising  in  bclialf  of  tlie  invaders 
impossible. 

On  the  following  day  the  same  journal  and* 
the  newspapers  of  all  the  world  published  a 
Proclamation  from  the  Russian  Generalissimo 
which  may  fairly  be  ranked  as  one  of  the  world's 
epoch-making  dociunents  It  was  a  promise 
of  the  reconstitution  of  an  autonomous  Kingdom 
of  Poland  under  the  suzerainty  of  the  Tsar  : 

Poles  !  The  hour  lias  struck  in  wliicli  the  sacred 
dream  of  your  fatlicrs  and  forefathers  may  find  fulfilment. 

A  century  and  a  half  ago  the  Hving  flcsli  of  Poland 
was  torn  asunder,  but  her  soul  did  not  die.  She  lived  in 
liope  that  there  would  come  an  hour  for  the  resurrection 
of  the  Polish  nation  and  for  a  brotherly  reconciliation 
with  Russiii. 

The  Russian  Army  now  brings  you  the  joyful  tidings 
of  tliis  reconciliation.  May  the  boundaries  be  annihi- 
lated which  cut  the  Polish  nation  into  parts  !  May  that 
nation  reunite  into  one  body  under  the  sceptre  of  the 
Ivussian  Emperor.  Under  this  sceptre  Poland  shall  be 
reborn,  free  in  faith,  in  language,  in  self-government. 

One  thing  only  Russia  expects  of  you  :  equal  con- 
sideration for  the  rights  of  those  nationalities  to  which 
history  lias  linked  you. 

With  open  heart,  with  hand  fraternally  outstretched 
Russia  steps  forward  to  meet  you.  She  believes  that 
the  sword  has  not  rusted  which,  at  Griinwald,  struck 
down  the  enemy. 

From  the  shores  of  the  Pacific  to  the  North  Si  ^s  the 
Russian  forces  are  on  the  march.  The  dawn  of  a  new 
life  is  breaking  for  you. 

May  there  shine,  resplendent  above  that  dawn,  tlie 
sign  of  the  Cross,  symbol  of  the  Passion  and  resurrection 
of  nations  '. 

(Signed)     Commander-in-Chief  General 
Adjutant  Nicolas. 

1  (14)  August,  1914. 

While  the  weiglit  of  Polish  ojiinion  was 
already  strongly  against  giving  any  aid  to  the 
Austro-German  forces,  it  was  this  Proclamation 
which  definitely  and  immediately  crystallized 
Polish  sentiment  in  enthusiastic  loyalty  to 
Russia.  The  promise  made  by  the  Grand 
Duke  Nicholas  was  afterwards  confirmed  by 
Imperial  Edict.  Long  before  that,  however, 
the  attitude  of  the  Polish  people  had  been 
irrevocably  settled.  On  August  17  the  leaders 
of  the  several  political  parties  in  Warsaw- 
united  in  the  following  pronouncement : 

The  representatives  of  the  undersigned  political  parties, 
iissembled  in  Warsaw  on  the  16th  August,  1914,  welcome 
the  Proclamation  issued  to  the  Poles  by  His  Imperial 
Highness  the  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Russian  Forces 
as  an  act  of  the  foremost  historical  importance,  and 
implicitly  believe  that  upon  the  termination  of  the  war 
the  promises  uttered  in  that  Proclamation  will  be  for- 
mally fulfilled,  that  the  dreams  of  their  fathers  and  fore- 
fathers will  be  realized,  that  Poland's  flesh,  torn  asunder 
a  century  and  a  half  ago,  will  once  again  be  made  whole, 
that  the  frontiers  severing  the  Polish  nation  will  vanish. 
The  blood  of  Poland's  sons,  shed  in  united  combat 
against  the  Germans,  will  serve  equally  as  a  sacrifice, 
offered  upon  the  altar  of  her  Resurrection. 

The  Democratic  National  Party. 

The  Polish  Progressive  Party. 

The  Realist  Party. 

The  Polish  Progressive  Union. 


EFFECT    OF    A    GERMAN    BOMB    ON 

THE    RAILWAY    TRACK. 

An  unexploded  shell  is  seen  in  the  foreground. 

From  that  date,  though  the  Germans  con- 
tinued their  futile  intrigues,  there  was  never 
any  doubt  as  to  the  position  or  sentiments  of 
the  Polish  people.  The  invading  Austro- 
German  armies  were  the  enemy  ;  the  Russian 
troops  were  friends. 

It  was  only  by  degrees  that  the  people  of 
Poland  were  to  leam  the  extent  of  the  cala- 
mities which  were  to  be  visited  upon  their 
coimtry  ;  only  by  degrees  did  the  German 
invading  armies  give  up  the  hope  that  they 
were  soon  to  possess  and  dwell  in  a  hospitab'e 
and  friendly  Poland.  In  their  first  advance 
from  the  frontier  they  seem  to  have  engaged  in 
little  wanton  destructiveness.  They  regarded 
Poland  as  already  their  own  country,  and, 
as  the  invading  troops  expected  to  spend  th» 
winter  there,  it  w^as  not  to  their  interest  to  lay 
it  waste.  There  was,  it  is  true,  at  least  one 
conspicuous  exception.  As  soon  as  the  German 
troops  crossed  the  frontier  at  Kalisch  they 
seem  to  have  set  themselves  to  spread  a  reign 
of  terror  in  the  population.  Buildings  were 
burned,  harmless  citizen.s  were  executed,  and 
the  jjlace  was  given  up  to  plunder  and  rapine. 
The  mayor  of  the  town,  one  of  its  most  respected 
citizens,  was  dragged  from  his  bed  in  his  night- 

35-2  • 


326 


THE     TIMES    JJfSTOIfY    OF     THE    WAH. 


RETREATING    GERMANS    REBUILDING    A    BRIDGE    NE4R    KALISGH    PREVIOUSLY 

DESTROYED    BY    THEMSELVES. 


clothes  and  his  old  manservant  was  shot  dead 
before  him  for  trying  to  cover  the  half-naked 
body  of  his  master  with  his  own  coat.  The 
facts  are,  unhappily,  too  well  established  ; 
and  hardly  any  town  in  Belgium  was  as  brutally 
and  ruthlessl}^  used  as  was  the  old  city  of 
Kalisch.  No  explanation  of  this  outrage  has 
ever  been  given  ;  but  that  there  was  not  niucli, 
if  any,  excuse  in  the  form  of  provocation  by 
the  civil  population  seems  apparent  from  the 
fact  that  the  Germans  afterwards  declared, 
whether  truthfully  or  not,  that  the  officer 
responsible  for  it  had  been  disgraced. 

On  the  whole,  however,  the  German  advance 
into  Poland  seems  to  have  been  reasonably 
free  from  outrages  on  the  civil  population  ; 
and  it  is  to  be  noted  that,  from  now  on,  whatever 
credit  or  discredit  attaches  to  the  allies  for  the 
conduct  of  this  campaign  must  be  awarded 
to  the  Germans  and  not  at  all  to  the  Austrians- 

We  have  already  seen  that  a  certain 
"  stiffening  "  of  German  troops  had  been  intro- 
duced, without  any  material  result,  into  the 
Austrian  forces  in  the  later  stages  of  tlie 
Galician  campaign.  When  the  completeness  of 
the  Austrian  failure  in  that  campaign  became 
apparent,  Germany  assumed  control  of  all  the 
military  operations.  General  von  AufTenberg 
came  near  to  being  relieved  of  his  couunand. 


being  apparently  held  to  blame  for  the  failure 
to  protect  the  flank  of  Dankl's  army  in  its 
advance  on  Lublin.  The  commanders  of  at 
least  five  Austrian  Army  Corps — the  6th  ^ 
7th,  8th,  11th,  and  17th — seem  to  have  been 
removed,*  and  the  Austrian  military  organiza- 
tion as  a  whole  was  treated  as  if  in  disgrace. 
Vienna  became  full  of  German  Staff  officers, 
and  German  officers  assisted  in  the  defence  of 
Cracow.  A  system  was  adopted  of  linking 
German  and  Austrian  divisions,  .and  even 
brigades,  together,  and  the  supreme  control 
of  operations  was  vested  in  the  German  Head- 
quarters Staff.  It  will  be  remembered  that  there 
is  evidence  that  the  plan  of  the  Galician  cam- 
paign had  apparently  been  forced  on  Austria 
by  her  ally,  and  that  the  Austrian  Chief  of 
Staff,  General  Konrad  von  Hotzendorf,  never 
cordially  approved  of  it.  There  was  now  a 
widespread  inclination  in  Austria  to  hold 
Germany  responsible  for  the  miscarriage  of 
that  plan.  In  Vienna  and  elsewhere  there 
came  to  be  much  complaint  of  the  arrogant 
behaviour  of  German  officers  towards  Austrians, 
whether   soldiers    or   civilians.      INIuch   jealousy 


*  The  names  of  the  new  corps  commanders,  as 
announced  from  Vienna  early  in  October,  were  :  Cth 
Army  Corps,  General  Arz  ;  7th,  Griesler  ;  8tli,  Scheucht- 
enstnel  ;    11th,  Julieic  ;    17th,  Kritck. 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


327 


was  engendered  and  not  a  little  hatred  and 
bitterness,  which  grew  as  time  went  on.  That 
the  German  commanders  of  joint  forces,  in 
•cases  of  retreat,  gave  to  the  Austrian  troops  the 
thankless  and  dangerous  task  of  screening  the 
rear  of  the  retiring  German  corps  was  sufficiently 
shown  by  the  identity  of  the  prisoners  taken. 
Many  independent  observers  in  Russia  declared 
also  that  when  German  and  Austrian 
prisoners  were  confined  together  there  seemed 
to  be  more  hostility  between  them  than  either 
showed  towards  their  Russian  guards.  In 
the  newspaper  reports  of  the  day  many  stories 
were  told  to  illustrate  the  growing  lack  of 
harmony  between  the  two  allies.  It  was 
even  stated  that  Austria  before  the  end  of  tliis 
Polish  campaign  opened  overtures  looking  to 
the  making  of  a  separate  peace,  when  Russia 
demanded  terms  which  included  : 

(1)  The  surrender  of  Galicia  to  Kussia. 

(2)  The  surrender  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  to 
■Serbia  and  Montenegro. 

(3)  Withdrawal  from  the  alliance  with  Germany. 

(4)  The  reconstitution  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  mon- 
archy into  Federal  States,  one  of  which  should  be  an 
autonomous  Bohemia. 

Austria  was  said  to  have  considered  these 
terms  too  humihating.  AVithout  putting  too 
much  confidence  in  all  the  tales  of  Austro- 
German  friction  which  gained  ciurency  in  the 
literature  of  the  time,  it  is  certain  that  from  the 
autumn  of   1914  there  ceased  to  be  full  sym- 


pathy between  the  two  allied  peoples,  though 
the  exigencies  of  the  situation  compelled  Austria 
to  cling  to  her  more  powerful  neighbour  ; 
and  it  is  also  evident  that  for  the  misunder- 
standings which  arose  the  responsibility  must 
be  put,  even  more  than  on  the  Austrian  defeats, 
on  the  arrogant  behaviour  of  individual  German 
officers. 

The  first  German  offensive  movement, 
it  has  been  said,  began  on  September  27. 
From  documents  which  later  came  to  Light  it 
aj^pears  that  General  von  Hindenburg  had 
been  put  in  chief  command  of  the  combined 
Austro-German  forces  on  September  25.  For 
how  long  the  preparations  for  the  coding 
advance  had  been  maturing  we  do  not  know, 
but  ever  since  the  beginning  of  the  Austrian 
retreat  there  had  been  reports  of  German 
troops  being  moved  from  the  western  to 
the  eastern  front  and  of  the  massing  of  large 
German  forces  about  the  Polish  frontier  from 
Thorn  to  Cracow.  The  advance  was  begun, 
apparently,  simultaneously  by  four  separate 
armies  or  groups  of  troops.  The  first,  froni 
Thorn,  advanced  along  the  left  bank  of  the 
Vistula  and  the  railway  to  and  by  Wloclawek. 
The  second,  from  the  neighbourhood  of  Kalisch, 
aimed  at  Lodz.  The  third,  started  from 
Breslau  and  proceeded  via  Czestochowa  towards 
Piotrokow  and  Novo-Radomsk.  The  fourth, 
based    on    Cracow,  moved  north-eastward    by 


RUSSIAN    OUTPOST    FIRING    FROM    A    BARN. 


328 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


the  loft  banlc  of  the  upper  Vistula  towards 
Kielce.  I'his  Fourth  Army  was  largely  coin- 
posed  of  Ausirian  troops,  with,  it  is  believed, 
only  two  German  army  corps.  The  combined 
strength  of  the  four  armies  probably  amounted 
to  about  1,500,000  men,  of  whom  something 
over  1,000,000  were  Gennan.  This  Ls  exclusive 
of  tlio  main  Austrian  forces,  which  were,  of 
course,  still  in  Galicia  where  they  were  rallying 
in  the  country  west  of  the  Wisloka. 

The  advance  seems  to  have  partially  taken 
the  Russians  by  surprise.  It  had  rather  been 
anticipated  that  the  Germans  would  prefer 
to  await  attack  behind  the  strongly  entrenched 
frontier  line  from  Thorn  to  Czestochowa.  In 
the  view  of  Russian  military  authorities  the 
advance  was  a  mistake,  causing  the  battle  to 
be  joined  on  ground  more  favourable  to  the 
Russians.  There  appears  also  at  first  to  have 
been  some  uncertainty  as  to  the  German 
objective  :  whether  it  was  to  be  pushed  home 
as  an  attack  on  Warsaw  and  an  endeavour  to 
conquer  the  whole  of  Poland,  or  whether  it 
was  merely  a  demonstration  threatening  the 
rear  of  the  Russian  armies  in  Galicia  so  as  to 
compel  them  to  retire.  In  any  case,  the 
Russians  showed  no  haste  to  meet  the  new 
movement  and  the  German  advance  was  for 
a  while  almost  unresisted.  It  was  pushed  with 
characteristic  rapidity. 

By  October   3  the  Austro-German   (Fourth) 


Army  in  the  south  was  at  Stobnica,  a  place 
seven  or  eight  miles  over  the  Polinh  frontier 
on  the  left  side  of  the  upper  Vistula,  about 
midway  between  Cracow  and  Sandomierz. 
By  October  8,  farther  north,  the  Second  Army 
had  reached  and  occupied  Lodz,  and  wan 
issuing  proclamations  calling  upon  the  people 
to  rise  and  join  in  the  task  of  "  saving  Poland." 
By  the  11th  of  the  month  the  First  Army  was 
at  Sochaczew,  and  its  right,  or  possibly  a  de- 
tached force  from  the  Second  Army,  was  in 
contact  with  the  Russians  at  Skiemiewice. 
Already  Warsaw  could  hear  the  thunder  of  the 
enemy's  guns. 

While  the  northern  forces  were  thus  rapidly 
approaching  Warsaw,  the  Austro-German  Army 
had  also  travelled  fast,  in  spite  of  torrential 
rains  which  were  flooding  the  country,  so  that 
on  October  13  fighting  was  going  on  at  various 
points  between  Sandomierz  and  Iwangorod. 
On  the  following  day  (October  14)  a  German 
official  statement  from  Berlin  announced  that 
"  the  whole  of  Poland  with  the  exception  of 
Warsaw  is  in  our  possession."  Nor,  if  the 
statement  had  excepted  also  a  small  area 
round  Iwangorod,  would  it  have  been  an 
exaggeration.  On  October  15  the  Germans 
were  within  ten  miles  of  Warsaw  and  on  the 
16th  they  penetrated  to  within  seven  miles  ; 
and  there  was  no  adequate  force  in  sight  for 
the  city's  protection. 


RUSSIANS    ATTEND    A    RELIGIOUS    SERVICE    BEFORE    GOING    INTO    BATTLE. 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


329 


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30 


THE    WARSAW    FRONT. 


Warsaw  was  very  difficult  of  attack  from 
the  north.  On  that  side  approach  to  it  was 
barred  by  the  rivers  Vistula  and  Xarew  and 
the  strong  line  of  fortified  positions  from 
Novo  Ceorgievsk  to  Lomza.  Beyond  the 
last-named  point  ran  the  Bobr,  with  the 
fortress  of  Osowiec  and  a  region  of  swamp 
and  lake  to  and  beyond  Grodno.  More 
particularly  after  the  recent  German  repulse 
on  the  East  Prussian  front,  then,  Warsaw  had 
little  to  fear  from  any  enemy  on  the  north 
Apparently  the  Russians  were  slow  to  realize 
how  serious  was  the  present  threat  against  it, 
with  forces  of  such  magnitude  converging  upon 
it  from  all  parts  of  the  west  and  south  ;  though 
the  actual  force  engaged  in  the  immediate 
attack  on  Warsaw  does  not  seem  to  have 
exceeded  from  five  to  seven  army  corps,  only 
a  small  portion  of  which  were  first  line  troops. 

There  was  much  discussion  at  the  time  as  to 
why  General  von  Hindenburg  sent  so  com- 
paratively small  a  force  for  the  direct  assault 
on  Warsaw.     There  is  no  doubt  that  the  Ger- 


mans intended  and  expected  to  take  the  place. 
All  arrangements  had  been  made  for  its  occu- 
pation on  about  October  17  or  18.  Its  value 
to  them  as  a  base  for  future  operations  against 
Russia  was  obvious,  and  its  capture  at  that  time, 
just  a  week  after  the  fall  of  Antwerp  in  the 
west,  might  be  expected  to  have  great  nioral 
effect.  Yet  the  attack  on  the  position  was 
vmaccountably  half-hearted. 

It  was  to  be  remembered,  however,  that  the 
Germans  were  well  aware  that  the  Russian 
forces  in  Poland  at  that  time  were  trivial.  A 
few  divisions  of  cavalry  on  that  side  of  the 
Vistula  were  all  that  the  Austro-German  force 
had  to  deal  with  on  its  advance  on  Iwangorod. 
It  was  doubtful  if  two  Russian  army  corps  werie 
available  for  the  defence  of  Warsaw.  There 
was  no  considerable  force  at  Novo  Georgievsk. 
Iwangorod  was  masked  and  its  garrison  suffi- 
cienf  ly  occupied  by  the  Fourth  (Austro-German) 
Army,  and  no  help  could  come  from  that 
direction  ;  and  the  Germans,  still  convinced  of 
the    dilatoriness    of    Russia,    believed    that    it 


330 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


HEAVY    AUSTRIAN    ARTILLERY    IN    ACTION. 


would  be  a  long  time  before  material  Russian 
reinforcements  could  be  assembled  and  sent  to 
Warsaw,  either  from  Brest-Litovsk  or  Bialy- 
stok  and  Grodno.  In  these  circumstances,  it 
may  well  have  been  thought  that  the  half- 
dozen  German  corps  under  General  Mackensen, 
which  constituted  the  first  army  of  invasion, 
were  a  sufficient  force  for  the  purpose,  and  as 
much  as  could  be  advantageously  employed. 

The  2nd  and  3rd  Armies  had  pushed  into 
Poland  alongside  of  the  1st  Army.  They 
were  now  held  in  reserve  for  use  in  a  comiter- 
stroke  against  whatever  force  the  Russians 
might  ultimately  send  for  the  relief  of  Warsaw. 
The  natiu-e  of  this  intended  covinter-stroke, 
with  the  reasons  why  it  was  never  delivered, 
was  disclosed  in  the  German  official  accoimt  of 
the  operations  published  three  months  after- 
v/ards,  and  will  be  referred  to  later.  Mean- 
while, if  the  Germans  underestimated  the 
force  which  would  be  necessary  to  take  Warsaw, 
the  Russians  on  their  side  were  extraordinarily 
slow  in  taking  any  steps  for  the  city's  protection. 

The  thunder  of  the  enemy's  giuis  was  first 
heard  in  Warsaw  on  the  night  of  October  10-11, 
From  that  time  onwards  the  thunder  drew 
gradually  nearer,  while  hostile  aeroplanes  paid 
daily  visits  to  the  city,  and  something  like  panic 
soon  began  to  spread. 

The  Russian  authorities  for  a  time  issued 
preclamations  of  an  encouraging  nature, 
endeavouring  to  restore  public  confidence  ; 
but  as   each   day   the   sound   of  the   guns   in- 


creased, and  there  was  apparently  no  sign 
that  any  effort  was  being  made  to  send  help 
from  Russia,  the  discouragement  became 
profound.  The  State  Bank  packed  up  its 
archives  and  departed  in  haste  for  Siedlice, 
where  it  alighted  for  a  day  or  two  only,  and 
then,  taking  wing  again,  flew  in  one  spasm  of 
apprehension  to  Moscow.  In  the  meantime 
the  aeroplanes,  which  were  a  novelty  to  the 
people  of  Warsaw,  caused  great  annoyance. 
The  first  one  that  flew  over  the  city  was  an 
object  of  immense  curiosity  to  the  people,  and 
they  showered  the  city  with  bundles  of  pam- 
phlets proclaiming  that  the  Germans  were 
coming  to  save  the  Polish  race.  The  populace 
were  exhorted  to  have  no  fear  of  the  aeroplanes, 
as  no  damage  would  be  done  to  the  civil  popu- 
lation, but  onJj'^  troops  and  buildings  of  military 
value  would  be  destroyed.  It  is  probable  that 
this  was  actually  believed  by  the  Poles  for  as 
much  as  a  day,  but  not  longer.  For  the  next 
flock  of  airmen  that  flew  over  evidently  came 
from  quite  a  different  source  of  authority^ 
Instead  of  scattering  blandishments  and  words 
of  encouragement  about  the  "  future  of  Poland  " 
they  commenced  to  drop  bombs.  It  is  hardly 
necessary  to  say  that,  as  far  as  is  known,  not 
a  single  object  of  military  value  was  injured, 
nor  was  any  soldier  wounded,  though  forty  or 
more  civilians  were  killed  or  hm-t,  and  a  small 
amovint  of  private  property  was  destroyed. 

Accoimts  of  the  happenings  of  the  next  few 
days  inside  Warsaw  are  very  confused.     That 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


331 


is  probably  inevitable  in  such  circumstances. 
In  Antwerp,  in  the  days  preceding  its  fall, 
wild  and  contradictory  rumours  were  current  ; 
orders  to  evacuate  the  city  were  given  and 
cancelled,  and  the  greatest  luicertainty  pre- 
vailed. So  it  was  in  Warsaw.  It  seems  that 
the  decision  to  evacuate  the  city  was  actually 
taken  on  October  15  or  16,  and  trains  were 
provided  for  the  officials  and  others  who  wished 
to  leave.  Practically  all  the  British  colony 
and  many  others  who  did  not  care  to  fall  into 
German  hands  dejjarted  in  haste. 

Outside  the  fortifications  the  few  Russian 
troops  were  holding  the  enemy  back  as  stub- 
bornly as  they  could,  though  they  were  ovit- 
numbered  by  nearly  three  to  one.  Day  and 
night  the  windows  of  Warsaw  shook  with  the 
detonation  of  the  guns,  while  from  the  roofs  of 
the  buildings  the  population  could  see  the  shells 
bursting  to  the  west  and  soxith.  Wounded 
were  pouring  back  into  the  town,  but  still  there 
seemed  no  sign  or  hope  of  relief  ;  and  for  a  day 
or  two  the  Poles  gave  themselves  up  to  the  un- 
happy conviction  that  in  spite  of  their  loyalty 
they  had  been  abandoned.  On  Sunday,  Oc- 
tober 17,  the  Germans  were  literally  at  the  edge 
of  Warsaw,  and  great  shells  from  their  6-inch 
field  howitzers  were  exploding  just  beyond  the 


town  Ihnits.  Opposed  to  the  advance  in  tliis 
direction  was  part  of  a  division  of  one  of 
Russia's  magnificent  Siberian  corps,  and  it  is 
this  heroic  band  that  Warsaw  has  to  thank 
for  its  remaining  in  Russian  hands. 

It  seems  to  be  well  established  that  there 
was  a  period  of  seven  hours  when  the  Germans 
might  have  entered  Warsaw  unopposed.  The 
Siberians  had  been  fighting  all  day  and  were 
cut  almost  to  pieces.  Their  artillery  was  said 
to  have  withdrawn,  and  they  themselves  were 
in  retreat,  offering  scarcely  any  semblance  of 
a  rearguard  action.  Individuals  departing  on 
the  train  were  told  that  the  Germans  were 
actually  entering  the  town  and  that  resistance 
liad  been  abandoned.  In  from  the  Radom  road 
streamed  the  shattered  fragments  of  regiments, 
and,  according  to  the  generally  accepted  version, 
there  were  four  hours  or  more  when  there  was 
not  in  this  direction  a  single  gun  or  effective 
unit  to  oppose  a  German  advance.  For  some 
incomprehensible  reason  the  enemy  at  just 
this  critical  moment  ceased  their  attack. 

It  is  difficult  to  know  exactly  what  took 
place  during  that  lull  of  the  German  fighting. 
Someone  seems  to  have  whipped  the  retreating 
fragments  again  into  shape,  and  mustered  a  few 
batteries  and  thrown  them  back  on  the  Radom 


AUSTRIAN    PRISONERS. 


332 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


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THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


300 


road,  so  that  when  the  Germans,  after  those 
fateful  hours,  again  resumed  their  attack  they 
found  themselves  still  opposed  as  before. 
The  most  reasonable  hypothesis  of  the  German 
failure  to  seize  their  opportunity  seems  to  be 
that  just  at  the  moment  when  the  Russians 
were  giving  up  hope  the  Germans  also  decided 
that  they  were  in  too  little  strength  to  carry 
the  position.  Short  as  it  was,  the  delay  was 
fatal  to  them.  The  next  day  there  came  to 
^Varsaw  some  weak  reinforcements  and  orders 
to  hold  on.  For  another  day  the  still  un- 
equal contest  was  continued,  when  the  Russians 
suffered  terribly.  Then  came  news  that  swept 
tlirough  Warsaw  from  street  to  street  and 
from  house  to  house  with  such  rapidity  that 
everyone  seemed  to  know  it  simultaneously. 
The  population  poured  into  the  streets  in  an 
uproar  of  rejoicmgs  and  excitement.  "  War- 
saw," it  was  announced,  "  was  to  be  held  at 
any  cost.  The  Grand  Duke  had  said  it.  Rein- 
forcements were  actually  on  the  way."  And 
almost  on  the  echo  of  the  first  announcement 
came  the  tidings  that  reinforcements  were 
coming  as  fast  as  steam  could  bring  them. 

The  first  corps  to  come  by  the  railway  was  one 
of  those  grand  units  from  Siberia,  and  the  first 
regiment  to  detrain  is  said  to  have  been  the 
9 1st  Siberian.  It  is  told  how  the  soldiers 
actually  leapt  from  their  box  cars  into  their 
company  formation  and  without  a  moment's 
delay  swung  out  over  the  Vistula  bridge 
through  the  main  street  of  Warsaw  and  on 
l)y  the  Jerusalem  road  to  the  front.  This 
regiment  had  already  so  distinguished  itself 
in  the  Galician  campaign  that  a  sword  of 
honoiu"  had  been  presented  to  its  commanding 
officer,  Colonel  Letchinsky.  To  had  been 
conspicuous  in  the  fighting  before  Lublin  and 
in  the  fierce  counter-attacks  which  drove  the 
Austrians  back  into  Galicia.  Arriving  there, 
it  had  taken  an  effective  part  in  the  eight  days 
battle  at  Rawa-Ruska  and  had  then  been  in 
the  van  of  the  advance  against  Jaroslau  and 
beyond.  It  was  still  on  active  service  when 
the  orders  came  that  Warsaw  must  be  relieved. 
It  was  loaded  into  railway  vans,  and,  as  we 
have  seen,  was  the  first  regiment  to  arrive  at 
Warsaw  in  the  moment  of  the  city's  crisis. 
People  who  saw  its  entrance  into  Warsaw  and 
its  march  through  the  main  street  and  out  on 
to  a  new  campaign  (in  which  be  it  said  that  it 
fought  for  eighteen  consecutive  days  and  was 
then  decorated  by  the  Grand  Duke  with  the 
Order     of     St.    George),    spoke    of    the    scene 


on  its  arrival  as  an  extraordinary  one.  With 
its  brass  band  blaring,  it  poured  through  the 
town.  The  men  unshaven,  dirty,  haggard,  and 
war-stained  from  their  campaign  in  Galicia, 
inarched  through  the  main  street  witii  the 
swinging  strides  of  veterans.  All  Warsaw 
seemed  almost  to  go  wild.  Women  and  children 
wept.  It  is  said  that  the  flower  stores  were 
stripped  and  every  sort  of  blosson\  was  thrown 
among  the  troops,  while  men  and  women  alike 
ran  beside  the  soldiers  tossing  them  cigarettes, 
fruit,  bits  of  bread,  and  anything  and  everything 
that  a  population  frenzied  with  delight  could 
offer  to  the  men  who  had  come  to  their  rescue. 
I\Ien  who  witnessed  it  said  that  they  could 
never  have  believed  that  they  would  live  to 
see  the  Poles  give  such  a  welcome  to  soldiers 
of  the  Tsar.  It  seemed  as  if,  in  that  historic 
hour,  a  century  of  bitterness  had  all  but  been 
obliterated. 

Behind  this  first  regiment  came  another 
and  another  and  another  ;  and  then  guns  and 
ammunition  caissons.  Behind  them  \A'ere  more 
regiments,  more  guns,  more  cavalry,  and  still 
again  more  divisions  and  more  cori)s,  until 
at  last  there  seemed  to  be  no  end  to  the  hordes 
of  troops  that  Russia  was  pouring  in.  From 
the  first  day  of  their  arrival  Warsaw  was  safe. 
By  October  21  the  Germans  were  in  retreat. 

In  speaking  of  the  reinforcements  which 
Russia  sent  to  relieve  Warsaw  a  Russian 
writer  says :  "  The  march  of  the  Russian 
armies  down  the  right  bajik  of  the  Vistula 
oveT-  roads  of  which  English  readers  can  have 
no  conception,  and  where  no  automobile 
transport  could  travel  in  terrible  weatiicr 
across  swollen  tributaries,  was  an  exi)]oii 
worthy  of  an  honourable  place  in  the  history  of 
the  Great  War."  What  the  precise  strength 
of  these  armies  was  is  unknown,  but  the  same 
writer  says  that  in  one  day  "  four  columns, 
each  250,000  strong,  crossed  the  Vistula  over 
sixteen  pontoon  bridges,"  and  deploj^ed  upon 
the  left  bank  to  advance  upon  the  Germans. 
Before  the  Germans  definitely  fell  back  thcire 
was  desperate  fighting,  especially  about  Blonie, 
but  a  strong  Russian  force,  pushing  down  the 
Vistula,  swung  round  the  enemy's  left  and 
occupied  Sochaczew,  making  a  hurried  witii- 
drawal  of  the  whole  German  force  necessary. 
This  movement  was  led  by  tlu^  Siberians 
Among  the  German  troops  which  suffered  most 
heavily  are  mentioned  the  20th  Army  Cor|)s: 
and  the  17th  and  Reserve  Corps,  which  bore 
the  brunt  of  the  struggle  about  Blonie. 

3r>-3 


334 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


A  curious  but  seemingly  well  authentiratcci 
detail  of  these  operations  before  Warsaw  is 
that  the  King  of  Saxony  was  present  with  his 
suite,  one  of  the  equerries  having  been  taken 
prisoner  by  the  Russians.  Inspired  German 
newspapers  had  for  some  time  been  dropping 
hints  of  an  act  of  great  pohtical  importance 
which  was  to  take  place  as  soon  as  Warsaw  \\  as 
in  German  hands.  It  is  believed  that  this  act 
was  to  be  the  resuscitation  of  a  Saxon  dynasty 
in  Poland.  To  have  all  preparations  ready 
for  so  dramatic  a  stroke  would  have  been 
entirely  in  accordance  with  the  German  pro- 
cedure throughout  the  war,  and  it  may  well 
have  been  calcvilated  that  this  would  be  the 
best  retort  to  the  promise  niade  by  the  Grand 
Duke  Nicholas,  and  confirmed  by  the  Tsar, 
of  the  establishment  of  an  autonomous  Kingdom 
of  Poland  under  Russian  suzerainty.* 

*  The  claims  of  the  Saxon  Royal  House  to  the  Throne 
of  Poland,  strictly  speaking,  are  inadmissible,  as  the 
Electors  of  Saxony  were  Kings  of  Poland  only  while  the 
Republic  was  an  elective  monarchy,  and  the  wearing  of 
the  Polish  Crown  conferred  no  sort  of  hereditary  right 
on  the  children  of  the  King.  Frederick  Augustus, 
Elector  of  Saxony,  "  The  Strong  Man  of  Sin,"  remark- 
able as  the  father  of  Marshal  Saxe  and  an  innumeraVjie 
progeny,  was  King  of  Poland  as  Augustus  II.  from  10i>7 
to  1706,  when  he  abdicated;  only  to  be  re-elected  in  1709 
He  died  in  1733  and  his  son  was  elected  as  Augustus  III. 
(1733-63).  When  Napoleon  erected  the  Grand  Duchy  of 
Warsaw  in  1807  he  gave  the  Throne  to  Frederick 
Augustus  I.,  King  of  Saxony  and  grandson  of  Augustus 
III.,  who  was  deposed  from  it  in  1813  and  lost  it  definitely 
by  the  Treaty  of  Vienna  in   181.5.     The  present  King  of 


While  Warsaw  had  been  going  through 
such  critical  times,  fierce  fighting  had  also 
been  in  progress  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Vistula 
opposite  luangorod,  where  the  Austro-German 
.tirmy  under  General  Dankl  had  arrived  with- 
out ineeting  any  more  serious  resistance  than 
minor  actions  at  Kielce  and  Radom,  which  had 
hardly  delayed  its  advance. 

Iwangorod  lay  on  the  eastern  or  right  bank 
of  the  Vistula  about  sixty  miles  to  the  south- 
east of  Warsaw,  and  was  credited  with  being 
a  fortress  of  the  first  class.  In  the  present 
operations  it  does  not  appear  that  its  safety 
was  ever  seriotisly  menaced.  The  Austro- 
German  force  sent  against  it  apparently 
consisted  of  seven  army  corps,  two  of  whicli 
were  German,  with  some  additional  units. 
^\'hatever  its  size  or  composition,  it  was  not 
strong  enough  to  take  Iwangorod.  If  the 
Germans  expected  that  it  would  prove  strong 
eiiougli,  it  was  but  another  example  of  their 
over-confidence  in  themselves  and  their  under- 
estimation of  their  enemj\  Arriving  opposite 
the  fortress,  on  the  west  side  of  the  river, 
without,  as  has  been  said,  encountering  any 
\-ery  serious  opposition  on  the  way,  the  allied 
force  opened  a  bombardment  with  heavy 
gmis   on  October   16.     On  the  following  days 

Saxony,  Frederick  Augustus  III.,  is  great -grand-nephew 
of  the  only  Grand  Duke  of  Warsaw,  and  five  generations 
removed  from  the  last  elective  Saxon  King  of  Poland. 


CONVEYING    RUSSIAN    WOUNDED    TO    HOSPITAL. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


33i 


RUSSIANS    ADVANCING    THROUGH    THH    WOODS    WITH    FIXED    BAYONETS. 


they  made  several  attempts  to  force  a  crossing 
of  the  river  on  pontoons,  but  without  any 
success.  The  point  from  which  their  main 
attack  was  directed  was  at  and  around  the 
Httle  village  of  Kozienice,  a  little  north  of,  or 
lower  down  the  river  from,  Iwangorod  itself. 

Kozienice  was  about  three  miles  from  the 
Vistula,  standing  on  tlie  last  elevated  ground 
Iiefore  the  country  dips  almost  to  the  level  of 
the  stream.  The  intervening  area  between  the 
liigh  ground  and  the  river  was  under  the  best 
conditions  low  and  marshy,  and  was  commanded 
by  the  road  that  ran  along  the  ridge.  The 
Germans  and  Austiians  had  made  this  ridge  into 
an  effective  line  of  defence,  though  there  are 
evidences  that  it  was  done  rather  as  a  forjual 
precaution  than  out  of  actual  fear  of  a  Russian 
attack.  On  the  night  of  October  20,  however, 
a  detachment  of  one  of  the  Caucasian  divisions 
crossed  t-he  river  from  the  Russian  side  and 
seems  to  have  gained  a  foothold  on  the  west 
bank  before  its  approacli  was  taken  seriously. 
After  reachmg  the  shore,  the  Russians  still 
had  some  two  miles  of  swampy  country  to 
cover  before  they  could  get  at  their  enemy  on 
the  ridge.  -  We  are  told  that  while  in  the  swamp 
the  Russians  came  under  the  batteries  of  the 
enemy,  which  were  able  froiTi  their  elevation 
to  sweep  the  low  country  with  almost  direct 
fire  ;  but  the  Caucasians,  wading  in  mire  up 
to  their  armpits.,  worked  their  way  u[),  regard- 


less of  their  losses,  through  the  naorass  and  took 
the  enemy  on  his  exposed  right  flank.  It  is 
probable  that  this  flank  was  not  very  strong. 
The  nature  of  the  ground  between  the  position 
and  the  river  was  so  obviously  bad  for  infantry 
that  attack  froni  this  direction  may  well  have 
been  thought  improbable.  Once  on  solid 
ground,  the  Caucasians,  not  the  most  docile 
of  the  Russian  troops,  seem  to  have  advanced 
against  the  exposed  Austrian  flank  with  such 
ardoiu*  and  impetuosity  that  it  crumbled  at 
the  first  assault. 

Under  cover  of  this  initial  advantage  the 
Russians  brought  up  more  troops,  until  the 
whole  Austrian  right  was  forced  back  from  the 
road  wliich  it  had  been  holding  into  a  strip  of 
wood  that  lay  directly  west  of  the  road.  The 
retirement  of  this  flank  involved  the  centre,  and 
finally  the  left,  which,  it  is  believed,  was  the 
position  held  by  the  German  contingent.  In 
any  event,  the  whole  of  the  allied  line  was 
dislodged  from  its  position  on  the  road  parallel- 
ing the  Vistula  and  hustled  unceremoniously 
into  the  edge  of  the  forest.  The  army  which 
had  hoped  to  capture  Iwangorod  could  not 
even  prevent  its  supposedly  inefticient  enemy 
from  crossing  the  river  and  attacking  over  a 
coimtry  involving  the  greatest  military  dis- 
advantages, and  tiu-ning  it  necic  and  crop 
out  of  a  well-located  and  strong  defensive 
position.     The    Austrians    and    Germans    were 


836 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


LANDSTURM    PATROL. 

^\ell  equipped  with  artillery,  and  after  the 
engagement  there  were  to  be  counted  forty- 
two  gim  positions  witliin  a  mile  of  Kozienice. 
Owing  to  the  difficulties  of  the  ground  the 
Russians  were  rniable  to  give  their  infantry 
any  material  support  from  artillery,  and  the 
performance  of  the  Russian  troops  under  the 
circixmstances  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
exploits  of  the  campaign. 

As  has  been  said,  the  couiitry  directly  west 
of  the  Kozienice-Iwangorod  road  was  heavily 
wooded.  For  perhaps  ten  miles  east  and 
west  and  thirty  or  forty  miles  north  and  south 
there  extended  a  forest  which  was  almost  a 
jungle.  Several  excellent  roads  leading  toward 
Radom  pierced  this  belt.  Otherwise  it  was 
difficult  to  traxel  through  the  forest  even  on 
foot,  so  dense  was  the  second  growth,  the 
fallen  timber,  and  imderbrush.  It  was,  then, 
into  this  belt,  which  Nat\are  seemed  to  have 
devised  especially  for  their  protection,  that 
the  enemy  was  forced.  Then  followed  an 
episode  which  was  buried  in  Russian  official 
dispatches  in  a  brief  mention  of  "  satisfactory 
progress  made  against  the  enemy  by  our  troops 
in  the  fighting  around  Iwangorod."  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  here  in  this  woodland  for  nine 
days  was   fought   what  must  by   all   accounts 


have  been  one  of  the  most  terrible  actions  tliat 
c\er  tof)]c  place. 

The  problem  presented  to  the  Russians  wa.s 
a  simple  one.  Into  the  woods  had  gone  the 
enemy.  The  woods  extended  east  and  west 
for  perhaps  ten  miles.  The  enemy  must  be 
driven  out.  It  was  perfectly  clear  that  if 
enough  Russians  went  into  the  eastern  side  of 
the  woods  and  kept  on  going,  eventually  the 
rnemy,  or  what  was  left  of  him,  would  emerge 
from  the  western  side  into  the  open  coimtr\-. 
So  dense  were  the  woods  even  on  the  outskirts 
that  shi-ajjnel  was  of  little  value.  In  the  first 
place,  it  was  almost  impossible  to  locate  the 
line  of  the  enemy,  and  the  lack  of  roads  and 
tliickness  of  the  woods  made  anything  like 
free  movement  of  giuis  impracticable.  So,  in 
single  heartedness  of  piu-pose,  the  Russian  in- 
fantrj'^  went  at  their  task  of  driving  the  enemy 
back  by  main  strength  ;  and  with  a  stubborn- 
ness that  challenges  admiration  the  Austrians 
and  Germans  went  back  only  almost  inch  by 
inch,  every  yard  won  having  to  be  purchased 
dearly  by  the  Russians. 

After  two  days  the  whole  fight  had  become 
what  might  be  called  an  informal  one.  Regi- 
ments and  battalions  might  keep  more  or  less 
in  touch  one  with  the  other,  but  the  man  in 
the  ranks  had  no  idea  of  what  was  going  on 
elsewhere  than  immediately  in  front  of  him. 
He  knew,  perhaps,  that  a  company  of  the 
enemy  had  made  a  little  fort  of  their  own, 
and  for  a  day  or  two  the  only  thing  in  his  mind 
was  to  take  that  one  spot  of  resistance.  With 
each  day  the  fighting  became  more  scattered 
and  more  general  ;  and  with  each  day  the  lines 
of  the  enemy  gave  back  slowly  toward  the 
west.  Day  after  day  saw  fresh  Russian 
battalions,  regiments,  even  brigades  and  divi- 
sions, led  into  their  side  of  the  wood,  to  dis- 
appear and  to  all  intents  and  purposes  be  lost 
sight  of  for  a  week.  The  losses  on  both  sides 
were  appalling ;  but  the  Russians  could  fill 
their  gaps  overnight,  while  the  enemy  probably 
could  not  fill  his  at  all.  At  the  end  of  a  week, 
then,  the  Austrians  and  Gernaans  were  almost 
through  the  wood,  %vith  only  a  mile  or  two 
between  them  and  the  stretch  of  open  coimtr\- 
which  they  must  traverse  in  their  retreat, 
and  the  indications  in  the  forest  afterwards 
showed  that  the  fear  of  that  belt  of  unprotected 
country  must  have  been  present  to  the  whole 
retreating  army  ;  for  the  last  narrow  stretch  of 
woodland  was  a  continuous  maze  of  trenches 
and  small  forts  thrown  up  by  a  few  soldiers  ; 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


337 


MAP  TO    ILLUSTRATE   THE    OPERATIONS    IN    POLAND. 


33S 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


and  the  desperation  with  which  each  one  was 
fought  over  was  proved  by  the  ahnost  innumer- 
able graves  and  wooden  crosses  which  studded 
the  whole  region. 

At  last  came  the  final  stand,  and  then  the 
retirement  of  the  enemy  across  the  bit  of 
open  ground.  For  nine  days  the  sullen  field 
artillery  of  the  Rassians  had  been  baying 
ineffectually  or  else  waiting  quietly  with 
muzzled  guns  in  the  reserve  until  their  hour 
should  come.  When  the  open  country  was 
reached  it  was  their  turn,  and  the  spectacle 
on  that  open  field  must  have  been  one  ne\er  to 
be  forgotten.  Some  weeks  after  the  action 
acre  after  aero  was  still  stre%«i  with  exploded 
shells,  cases,  bloody  bandages,  dead  horses, 
and  broken  equipment  ;  and  between  and 
among  all  were  the  dreadful  fragments  of 
hiimanity  too  small  to  hav'e  been  picked  up 
for  burial :  a  hand,  a  foot,  fragments  of  bone, 
a  bit  of  skull,  a  leg  sticking  out  of  a  boot, 
and  all  the  other  ghastly  relics  which  show- 
where  human  beings  have  been  exposed  to 
the  rain  of  shrapnel  and  shell  fire.  The  woods 
were  still  filled  with  unbui'ied  dead,  lying 
about  in  every  conceivable  nook  or  corner 
where  a  desperate  man  could  take  refuge 
from  the  guns  or  defend  himself  from  a  hand- 
to-hand  attack  with  the  bayonet.  Already 
the  Russians  had  buried  16,000  of  their  own 
and     the     enemv's     dead.     Still     there     were 


thousands  left  in  tlie  woods.  It  is  safe  to  put 
down  the  killed  alone  in  this  action,  from  the 
crossing  of  the  river  until  this  open  spot  near 
the  village  of  Augustow,  at  20,000,  and  the  total 
casualties  cannot  have  been,  in  that  single 
small  area,  less  than  100,000.  It  should  be 
added  that  while,  in  this  war,  it  had  already 
become  the  fashion,  both  in  Germany  and  among 
the  Allied  Powers,  to  decry  the  valour  of  the 
Austrian  soldiers,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
here,  as  at  (.Jrodek  and  Rawa-Ru.ska,  they 
fought,  however  ineffectually,  with  great 
gallantry. 

On  October  23  a  Russian  official  announce- 
ment said  that  the  enemy  was  in  full  retreat 
from  before  Iwangorod,  to  the  fortifications 
of  which  "  no  essential  damage "  had  been 
done  by  his  gun-fire.  It  was  on  October  21 
that  the  Germans  had  begun  to  fall  back  from 
Warsaw.  By  October  22  the  tide  had  already 
receded  so  far  from  the  city,  and  the  Russians 
were  pressing  the  piu^uit  with  such  ardour, 
that  the  cliief  fighting  on  that  day  was  on  the 
Bzura  beyond  Sochaczew  and  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Louicz.  On  the  24th  DankFs 
army  had  been  forced  back  to  Radom.  On  the 
25th  the  Russian  official  communique  spoke  of 
the  battle  as  raging  along  a  front  from  Radom 
to  Skierniewice,  and  on  the  28th,  at  one  end 
of  that  line,  Radom,  and  at  the  other  end, 
Lodz,  had  been  reoccupied  bj'^  the  Russians. 


DEAD    AUSTRIANS    AFTER    THE    BATTLE    OF    KIELCE. 


THE    TIMES    FIISTOBY    OF    THE    WAB. 


339 


THE    AUSTRIAN    HEIR    APPARENT    IN   POLAND. 


According  to  a  Russian  writer,  extraordinary 
scenes  had  been  witnessed  in  Lodz  during  the 
German  occupation.  From  the  first  days 
there  had  been  a  great  influx  into  that  demo- 
cratic and  industrial  town  of  Princes  of  the 
German  Confederation  and  German  aristo- 
crats. At  the  Hotels  Bristol  and  Savoy 
stayed  many  Germans  of  high  rank,  including 
the  Grand  Duke  of  Saxe-Meiningen.  These 
gentlemen,  covered  with  decorations,  devoted 
themselves  to  every  kind  of  enjoyment.  In 
the  hotels  which  they  honoured  champagne 
flowed,  nuisic  played,  and  dancers  exported 
from  Germany  gladdened  the  eyes  of  the  princes. 
Not  improbably  they  had  assembled  there 
to  be  on  hand  to  give  eclat  to  the  accession  of 
the  King  of  Saxony  to  the  Polish  throne. 
Just  before  the  German  withdrawal  from 
Lodz  the  princes  and  counts  attached  to  the 
German  Stafi  went  hunting  in  the  Liusmerski 
forests,  which  are  renowned  as  game  preserves. 
It  was  a  fine  sight — the  cavalcade  galloping 
through  the  woods,  the  sun  reflected  from  many 
glittering  helmets.  Two  days  afterwards,  how- 
ever, the  scene  changed.  The  German  Army  had 
broken  against  the  living  wall  of  the  Russian 
soldiers.  The  hunters  became  the  hunted,  on 
whose  trail  a  merciless  chase  was  organized. 

The  chief  lines  of  German  retreat  wer.- 
along  the  main  railway  from  Warsaw  by 
Piotrokow  and  Novo-Radomsk  to  Czesto- 
chowa,  along  the  line  of  the  light  railway 
from  Lodz  to  Kalisch,  and  north-westerly 
from  Lowicz  towards  Thorn.  The  Austro- 
German  forces  fell  back  on  the  route  by  which 


they  had  come,  by  Kielce  to  Olkusz  and  the 
shelter  of  Cracow.     All  the  retiring  armies  did 
their    best,    by    destroying    bridges,    wrecking 
railways,  and  ploughing  up  roads  behind  theni 
to  delay  pursuit.     The  German  ofiicial  accounts 
of  the  operations,  published  three  months  later, 
declared  that  these  measures  were  so  successful 
that  the  Russian  advance  was  rendered  very 
slow  and  the  allied  forces  had  abundant  time 
to  retire  in  good  order.     This  was  only  partially 
true    of    the    n^ain    German    forces    and    very 
far  from  true  of  the  southern  Austro-German 
army.      The   Russian  force  which  pushed   the 
German    arinies    back    was    in    command    of 
General   Ruzsky,  who   had   already   shown   in 
the    Galician    campaign    how    thoroughly    he 
understood  the  art  of  making  things  uncom- 
fortable  for  a  beaten  army  and  how  rapidly 
his  men  could  push  a  pursuit  over  any  kind  of 
country,  however  lacking  in  roads  or  railways. 
The  fighting  about  Skierniewice  and  Lowicz 
wa.s     of    a    serious    character,     the     Germans 
attempting    to    make    a   stand   in    a  carefully 
prepared  position  which  the  Russians  carried 
with  the  bayonet.     Around  Rawa  the  Russians 
took   400   German   prisoners   and   buried   over 
400  (Jerman  dead.     There   was  stern  fighting 
along  the  Pilitsa,  both  nortli  and  south  of  the 
river.     At   the   end   of   October   the    Russians 
were  "  advancing  victoriously  along  the  whole 
front."'     In    the    first  week  of    November  the 
main  German  retreat  had  fallen  back  beyond 
the    frontier,    not    even    making    a    stand    at 
Kaliscli     or     Czestocliowa.      On     November     i) 
the  Russian  cavalrv   crossed  the  frontier  and 


840 


THE    TIMES    HISTOTiY    OF    THE    WAR. 


RUSSIAN    TRANSPORT    IN    POLAND. 


raided  German  territory  at  Pleschon,  just 
north  of  Kalisch,  and  General  Joffre  and  Lord 
l\jtchener  sent  glowing  telegrams  of  congratu- 
lation to  the  Cirand  Duke  Nicholas. 

If  the  main  German  armies  in  their  retire- 
ment, however,  were  thus  harried,  they  did  not 
suffer  nearly  so  heavily  as  did  the  Austro- 
German  force  on  its  retreat  from  Iwangorod. 
To  the  Austrian  troops,  indeed,  as  not  infre- 
quently, had  been  entrusted  the  most  dangerous 
part  of  the  allied  operations,  and,  charac- 
teristically, it  was,  as  we  shall  see,  on  their 
failure  that  the  Germans  subsecjuently  put 
the  responsibility  for  the  collapse  of  the  whole 
campaign.  There  is  no  doubt  that  in  this 
retirement  from  Iwangorod  such  German 
troops  as  there  were  in  the  combined  army 
went  on  ahead  (bj'  not  less  on  the  average,  it 
is  said,  than  one  day's  march),  and  left  to  the 
Austrians  the  whole  work  of  protecting  their 
retreat  and  fighting  rearguard  actions.  The 
Austrians  fully  understood  wb.at  was  being 
done,  and  it  is  said  that  in  the  coiu-se  of  the 
retreat  many  thousands  of  Austrian  soldiers 
surrendered  on  the  slightest  pretext,  giving 
as  their  reason  afterwards  their  discouragement 
and  disgust  with  their  treatment  hy  their 
German  allies.  The  Poles  in  the  Austrian 
ranks  especially  began  to  lay  down  their  arms 
and  give  themselves  up  whenever  the^'  could 
do  so  with  safety. 


Mention    has    already    been    made    of    the 
fighting  about  Radom  and  the  occupation  of 
that    place    by    the    Russians.     The    struggle 
seems  to  have  gone  on  for  some  four  days  in 
the  Radom  forests,  but  the  occupation  of  the 
town   itself,    on    October    27-28,    was   effected 
without   serious   resistance.     From   Radom   to 
Kielce  there  ran  an  excellent  road,  which  for 
u:iuch  of  its  distance  was  an  elevated  causeway 
built     above     low-lying     and      often     marshy 
ground,    while    other    portions    ran    between 
heavily    wooded    forest    land.     The    Austrians 
in  retreat  did  everything  that  could  be  done  to 
make  this  highway  impassable.     The  road  was 
ploughed  up,  bridges  were  burned  or  blowndown, 
and   culverts   exploded,   leaving  great   ditches 
across  the  road.      In  many  places  to  go  round 
these  obstacles  would  have  meant  traversing 
the  soft  meadow  lands   by  the  roadside,   the 
sinldng  of  transport,  and  miring  of  guns.   Along 
the  wooded  portions  it  was  equally  difficult  to 
leave  the  road  without  felling  hundreds  of  the 
big  trees  that  pressed  in  close  to  the  highway. 
The  result  was  that  the  Russians  were  materially 
delayed    during    the    following    days    in    their 
advance.     Though  the  infantry  could  press  on, 
guns   and   transport    had   to   wait   for   repairs 
to  be  accomplished.     The  Russian  engineers, 
however,  were  on  the  "heels  of  the  first  regiments 
of  the  advance,  and  they  worked  desperately 
in     extemporizing     bridges     and     corduroying 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


341 


roads  through  the  marsh  lands  tliat  flanked 
the  highway.  The  delay  served  to  give  the 
Anstrians  a  chance  to  throw  v^p  hurried  works 
in  the  vicinity  of  Kielce,  where  an  action  was 
fought  on  November  3  which  in  any  other  war 
would  be  chronicled  as  a  battle  of  importance. 

The  Austrian  line  was  spread  out  here  on 
a  length  of,  perhaps,  seventy  kilometres 
from  the  west  of  Kielce  to  near  Sandomierz, 
on  the  Vistula.  The  centre  of  the  Austrian 
line  was  in  a  village  perhaps  ten  imles  east  of 
Kielce  itself,  and  in  the  centre  of  the  village 
wa.s  a  walled-in  graveyard,  the  whole  of  which 
had  been  flanked  with  gun  positions  and  pro- 
tected with  wing  trenches  and  hurriedly 
<'rected  barbed  wire  entanglements.  It  seems 
that  the  Austrians  and  their  C4erman  advisers 
{who,  however,  had  pushed  on  to  the  south  the 
afternoon  before  the  action)  considered  the 
position  sufficiently  strong  to  delay  the  enemj'' 
for  three  or  four  days.  But  the  Russian  army, 
with  the  famous  Caticasian  corps  in  the  van, 
came  on  with  irresistible  momentum.  We  are 
told  that  the  main  column,  its  transport  keeping 
pace  with  it,  «as  moving  at  the  rate  of  fifteen 
or  sixteen  miles  a  day,  in  spite  of  all  obstacles, 
while  flanking  regiments  thrown  out  to  east 
and  west  were  covering  soinetunes  as  many  as 


twenty-five  nuU^s  in  the  twenty-four  hours. 
-After  their  gruelling  experience  in  crossing  the 
Vistula  and  the  week-longhand-to-hand  struggle 
in  the  woods,  the  Caucasians  were  thoroughly 
aroused  and  in  no  mood  to  be  checked  by  any 
rearguard.  Just  as  the  Austrians  were 
putting  the  finishing  touclies  to  their  field  works 
the  Caucasians,  covered  lij''  a  screen  of  Cossack 
cavalry,  swept  in  upon  their  front  and  deployed 
against  their  centre. 

This  was  towards  the  evening  of  November 
3.  The  enemy,  it  appears,  anticipated  an 
engageinent  commencing  on  the  following  morn- 
ing with  the  characteristic  artillery  action,  to 
be  followed  later  in  the  day,  or  perhaps  not 
tmtil  the  next  day.  with  an  infantry  attack, 
which  the  Atistrians  would  be  fully  prepared  to 
receive.  But  they  were  not  in  the  least 
jjrepared  for  what  was  to  come.  The  Cau- 
casians, after  just  enougli  rest  to  give  them  tinae 
to  have  sometliing  to  eat,  without  even  waiting 
lor  the  complete  development  of  their  artillery 
support,  attacked  the  Atistrian  centre  with  the 
bayonet. 

The  strongest  position  of  the  whole  line  of 
defence  was  the  graveyard  with  the  little 
white  church  in  the  middle.  Before  the 
Austrians  A\ere  fully  alive  to  what  was  going 


POLISH    COTTAGERS    RAKING    OVER    THE    KUINS    OF    THEIR    HOMES. 


342 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE     WAR. 


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THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE     WAR. 


343 


on  the  Caucasians  were  pouring  over  the  wall, 
overrunning  barlied  wire  and  wing  trenches, 
with  an  impetuosity  which  crumbled  the 
Austrian  centre  as  the  incoming  tide  dissolves 
a  castle  on  the  seashore.  Tho  little  graveyard 
where  for  centiu-ies  the  dead  of  the  village 
had  slept  beneath  the  shadow  of  overhanging 
trees,  was  transformed  into  a  shambles.  The 
only  outlet  was  a  single  gate,  and  the  Russian 
soldiers  took  this  in  their  rvish,  effectually 
closing  the  compound  within.  Here  in  the 
darkness  men  fought  hand  to  hand,  stumbling 
over  graves  and  wakening  the  echoes  \\ith 
rifle  shots  and  shoutings  and  with  the  groans 
and  moans  of  the  dying.  It  is  no  fiction  to 
speak  of  the  ground  herfe  as  being  soaked  with 
blood.  A  Special  Correspondent  of  The  Times, 
who  visited  the  spot  soon  after  the  action, 
found  great  clots  of  coagulated  blood,  "  like 
bits  of  raw  liver,"  lying  everywhere.  The 
surrounded  Austrians,  taken  by  surprise,  liad 
fought  with  desperation  and  stubbornness, 
but  as  the  hxindreds  of  dead  crumpled  up  under 
the  trees  and  among  the  tombstones  too  well 
indicated,  they  were  no  match  for  the  Cauca- 
sians when  it  came  to  hand-to-hand  fighting 
with  cold  steel  and  clubbed  muskets.  When 
morning  came,  the  Austrian  centre  had  dis- 
appeared and  the  whole  line  of  the  army  left 
to  screen  the  German  retirement  was  in  retreat. 
At  one  o'clock  of  the  same  day  the  Russians 
poured  into  Kielce,  horse,  foot,  and  artillery, 
while  on  the  flanks  tiieir  infantry  were  sticking 
up  the  stragglers  among  the  enemy,  and,  on 
the  extreme  left,  entering  Sandomierz,  which 
had  to  be  taken  by  storm  against  a  triple  line 
of  defences. 

The  Austrians  are  believed  to  have  lost  here 
heavily  in  dead  and  woLinded,  while  more  than 
12,000  prisoners  and  fifty  giuis,  with  numerous 
nmcliine  guns,  fell  into  the  Russian  hands. 
After  the  fight  the  victors  made  no  stop  at 
Kielce  but  pushed  right  on.  Kielce,  which 
had  been  blue  with  Austrians  at  ten  in  the 
morning  of  November  4,  was  grey  with  Russians 
at  two  in  the  afternoon.  The  artillery  that 
had  been  in  action  the  night  before,  as  well  as 
that  which  had  not  had  time  to  come  up 
on  the  [)receding  evening,  now  came  pouring 
through  the  town  ;  the  guns,  dirty  and  blistered 
from  tho  contact  with  enemy's  shrapnel  in 
many  previous  engagements,  came  clanking 
and  jingling  over  the  rough  stones  of  the  streets, 
the  tired  but  still  eager  soldiers  eating  their 
rations  on  limber  and  in  saddle  as  they  pushed 


forward  to  the  front.  By  four  in  the  afternoon 
the  Russian  advance  was  again  pressing  the 
Austrian  rear  and  the  hungry  guns  were  once 
more  at  work.  With  the  Germans  well  out 
of  the  way  of  the  Russians  moving  leisurely 
with  their  transport  and  artillery,  the  Austrians 
evidently  had  no  intention  of  fiu"ther  sacrificing 
themselves  vmnecessarily,  but  made  what  speed 
they  could,  losing  now  and  again  small  con- 
tingents, on  their  way  to  the  Polish  border  and 
the  protection  of  Cracow. 

It  is  now  necessarj'^  to  turn  to  the  events 
which  had  been  happening  since  the  invest- 
ment of  Przemysl,  in  Galicia,  for  which  a 
Russian  Governor  had  been  appointed  in  the 
person  of  Count  Bobrinsky,  under  whom  the 
civil  administration  of  the  newly  acquired 
territory  was  soon  working  without  apparent 
friction.  The  new  governor  divided  Galicia 
into  tliree  provinces — Lemberg,  Tarnopol,  and 
Bulcowina — the  first  of  which  \^as  destined  to 
be  part  of  the  new  Kingdom  of  Poland. 

Simultaneously  with  the  begirming  of  the 
German  invasion  of  Poland,  the  Austrian 
armies  in  western  Galicia  also  began  to  show  a 
tendency  to  take  the  offensive.  It  was  like 
the  slow  tiu-ning  of  a  tide  or  the  resiu-gence  of 
the  water  in  a  well  fed  by  some  subterranean 
spring.  In  a  dispatch  from  the  Russian  Great 
General  Staff  the  Austrian  troops  on  the  advance 
were  described  as  "  a  mass,  operating  in  diiTe- 
rent  directions,"  and  feeling  its  way  "very 
cautiously."  This  mass  seems  to  have  been 
under  the  command  of  von  Auffenberg  and  the 
Archduke  .Joseph  Ferdinand  with  CJeneral 
Bohm-Ermolli  in  command  of  the  cavalry. 
To  what  extent  it  was  composed  of  the  rem- 
nants of  the  original  armies  of  von  Auffen- 
berg and  the  Archduke,  and  how  much  of 
reinforcements  and  German  "  stiffening,"  we 
do  not  know.  In  any  case,  moving  on  a 
narrow  front  for  its  size  and  with  exceeding 
slowness,  it  constituted  a  formidable  force, 
and  before  it  the  Russians,  while  their  cavalry 
continually  fenced  with  and  hamed  the  front 
and  sides  of  tho  mass,  fell  back  in  the  first 
week  of  October  behind  the  line  of  the  San. 
There  they  stood.  We  have  seen  in  a  former 
chapter  that  it  was  only  by  an  extraordinary 
feat  of  arms  that  the  Russians  had  succeeded 
in  crossing  the  San,  in  the  reverse  direction, 
on  the  heels  of  the  flying  enemy.  They  had 
no  intention  now  of  allowing  the  enemy  to 
force  a  recrossing  against  them. 


344 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE     WAR. 


This  retirement  partially  relieved  Przeiaysl, 
the  western  forts  of  which  were  disengaged 
about  October  10  (or  at  the  same  time  as 
Warsaw  first  heard  the  German  guns),  and  had 
free  communication  v\ith  their  friends  and  with 
Cracow.  The  Russians,  however,  still  pressed 
upon  Przomysl  on  the  eastern  side.  Though 
their  main  forces  were  east  of  the  San,  the 
cavalry  continued  to  make  raids  and  recon- 
naissances on  the  west  of  the  river.  Continuous 
rains  had  reduced  the  roads  to  a  deplorable 
condition,  but  we  heard  of  sharp  cavalry  engage- 
ments on  the  left,  or  west,  side  of  the  San  on 
October  13,  and  fairly  heavy  fighting  to  the 
south  and  soutli-west  of  Przemysl  on  October  10 
(hi  the  18th  the  Austrians  made  a  determined 
effort  to  cross  tlie  San,  but  were  repulsed.  The 
effort  was  renewed  on  the  following  days, 
seemingly  with  gallantry  but  without  any 
success,  and  it  was  said  that  the  river  bore 
numbers  of  Austrian  corpses  down  to  San- 
tlomierz  and  Iwangorod.  During  these  days, 
also,  the  fighting  on  the  south-west  of  Przemysl, 
between  Sanok  and  Sambor,  increased  in 
intensity,  and  here  the  Russians  on  October  20 
claimed  to  have  taken  large  numbers  of  prisoners 
tlirougli  a  dashing  flanking  movement  by 
troops  vrnder  General  Dmitrieff. 

Of  aU  these  affairs  we  iiave  only  very  frag- 
mentary  information,   but   it   is   e\ident   that 


much  of  the  fighting  «a.s  of  a  desperate 
character,  though  the  country  was  almost 
waterlogged  and  half-flooded.  About  October 
21  or  22  (at  the  moment  when  the  Germans 
were  beginning  to  fall  back  from  Warsaw)  the 
Austrian  attack  seems  to  have  lost  its  momen- 
tum. Russian  official  statements  began  to 
speak  of  "  our  advance  "  in  the  neiglibourhood 
of  Przemysl,  and  fierce  fighting  raged  aroimd 
Jaroslau,  while  farther  south  an  Austrian 
division  seems  to  have  been  almost  annihilated 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  Sambor  on  October  28. 
On  the  last  days  of  the  month  there  was  much 
confused  fighting,  in  which  the  initiative  was 
plainly  passing  into  Russian  hands.  In  the 
first  days  of  November  the  Russians  definitely 
took  the  offensive  on  the  San,  and,  having 
beaten  off  every  attempt  of  the  enemy  to  pass 
the  river,  themselves  began  to  force  a  crossing. 
By  November  i  they  had  established  themselves 
at  various  points  on  the  west  side  of  the  river, 
and  on  November  G  the  news  of  a  complete 
victory  there  was  celebrated  by  a  Te  Deuni 
at  the  Russian  General  Headquarters  at  wliich 
the  Tsar  was  present. 

So  ended  in  failure  at  e\'ery  point  the  first 
Avistro-German  invasion  of  Poland.  When  the 
completeness  of  the  failure  became  apparent, 
the  Germans  spoke  of  the  whole  operation  as 


AUSTRIAN    AMMUNITION    BEING    TRANSPORTED    TO    THE    FRONT. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


345 


THE    KAISER    (marked   with    a    cross)    RECEIVING    THE    ACCLAMATIONS    OF    HIS 
SOLDIERS    DURING    A    VISIT    TO    THE    POLISH    FRONT. 


merely  a  "  reconnaissance  "  If  it  was  a  recon- 
naissance, it  was  the  most  costly  and  most  ill- 
advised  reconnaissance  recorded  in  historJ^ 
But  reconnaissances  are  not  iiiade  with  over  a 
million  and  a  half  of  men,  nor  are  they  pushed 
to  the  point  of  such  fighting  as  took  pjace  at 
]  wangorod. 

Later,  after  two  months  of  reconsideration, 
the  ofifi(;ial  German  account  of  the  operations, 
published  on  January  17,  1915,  put  forward  a 
new  theory,  which  it  is  not  much  easier  to 
accept. 

According  to  this  theory,  as  German  troops 
could  now  be  spared  from  East  Prussia,  it  was 
decided  to  use  them  in  helping  Austria.  With 
this  object  an  Austrian  Army,  with  a  German 
contingent  attached,  started  from  Cracow  on 
September  28  (the  date  is  approximately 
correct)  up  the  left  side  of  the  upper  Vistula 
towards  Randomierz.  Nothing  is  said  of  the 
simultaneo\i.s  advance  of  the  other  German 
armies.  It  was  merely  a  flanking  movement 
ngainst  the  Kussian  troops  in  (jalicia  to  relieve 
the  pressure  on  tlie  Austrians  on  and  beyond 
the  San.     At  this  time  there  were  only  some 


six  Kussian  cavalry  divisions  in  Poland  west  of 
the  Vistula. 

Unfortunately,  according  to  the  German 
view,  the  Austrians  failed  to  take  advantage 
of  the  new  situation.  They  v\ere  unable  to 
cross  the  San,  although  the  Austro-German 
invading  army  had  pushed  on  with  great  elan 
towards  Iwangorod.  The  Austrians  having 
failed  to  push  the  Russians  back,  the  enemj- 
was  enabled  to  throw  great  masses  of  men 
across  the  Vistula  at  Sandomierz  and  Josefow, 
which  threatened  to  encircle  the  allied  right 
to  the  east  of  Opatow  At  the  same  time  great 
Russian  forces  advanced  from  Twangorod. 
Only  then  was  it  that  the  dash  on  Warsaw  was 
undertaken,  in  order  to  distract  the  enemj' 
and  withdraw  some  of  his  strength  from  falling 
on  the  Austro-German  Army.  The  difliculty 
of  this  part  of  the  story  is  that  the  Germans 
were  already  close  to  Warsaw  ten  days  before 
the  Austro-German  troubles  began. 

The  Russian  force  advancing  on  ^^'a^.saw 
outnumbered  the  1st  German  Army  by  at  least 
four  to  one.  So  German  r(>inforcements  were 
hurried  up  (which  is  the  first  that  we  hear  of  the 


346 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


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THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


347 


2nd  Gorman  Army),  and  a  counter-offensive 
was  begun  by  crossing  the  Pilitsa  with  a  view 
to  falHng  on  the  flank  of  the  Russians  by 
Warsaw.  This  would  undoubtedly  have  suc- 
ceeded, but  once  more  the  scapegoat  Austrians 
tailed  to  do  their  part.  They  allowed  themselves 
to  be  dri\'en  back  from  Iwangorod,  by  Radom 
and  I^elce,  whereby  the  German  right  becaine 
so  exposed  that  there  Was  nothing  for  it,  in 
view  of  the  great  numerical  superiority  of  the 
(-nenxy,  but  for  the  whole  Une  to  fall  back 
beyond  the  frontier  ;  a  movement  which  the 
(<erman  armies  accomplished  with  their  usual 
steadiness,  and  with  a  thorough  destruction  of 
all  the  roads  and  railways  as  they  went. 

This  summary  of  the  German  official  version 
is  chiefly  interesting  for  its  ungenerous  and 
almost  brutally  contemptuous  tone  towards 
the  Austrians.  As  a  serious  story  of  the 
operations  it  can  only  be  naade  tenable  by  a 
complete  ignoring  of  dates  and  an  overturning 
of  most  of  the  main  facts  of  the  campaign. 

It  has,  however,  been  already  suggested  that 
one  point  which  emerges  from  this  story  is 
[)robably  true,  namely,  that  while  the  4th 
Austro-German  Army  was  sent  towards  I\van- 
gorod  to  prevent  any  Russian  force  from 
crossing  the  Vistula  on  the  reaches  from 
Iwangorod  to  the  San,  the  1st  Army  was  sent 
on  alone  to  Warsaw,  the  other  armies  being 
lield  in  reserve  for  that  counter-offensive  by 
way  of  the  Pilitsa  which  was  to  fall  on  the 
flank  of  the  Russians  when  they  came  to 
Warsaw's  relief.  Unfortunately,  when  the 
Russians  came,  they  came  in  such  force  and 
with  such  dash  as  to  swee|)  1st  Army,  4th 
Army  and  Reserve  Armies  together  in  one 
comnion  ruin.  What  would  Jiave  happened 
if  von  Hindenburg  had,  in  the  first  instance, 
sent  a  stronger  force  to  strike  at  Warsaw,  or  if 
Mackensen,  with  such  force  as  he  had,  had  not 
failed  to  grasp  the  opportunity  of  seizing  the 
place  when  it  was  at  his  mercy,  it  is  not  easy  to 
say.  Perhaps  it  could  not  have  been  held 
{igainst  tlie  strength  which  Russia  puslied  up 
to  its  relief.  At  least,  however,  the  whole 
story  of  this  Polish  campaign  would  have  been 
a  different  one,  and  this  initial  German  failure 
would  have  been  less  inglorious  than  it  was. 

It  was,  of  course,  unthinkable  that  the 
Germans  should  sit  still  under  the  rebuff  which 
they  liad  received.  The  Russians  had  treated 
them,  including  some  of  their  best  troops,  as 
ui\ceremonious]y  as  they  liad  previously  treated 


GERMAN    MACHINE    GUN    SECTION. 


the  Avistrians.  The  natiu-al,  indeed  inevitable, 
reply  must  be  a  vigorous  and  immediate 
counter-offensiv^e. 

Long  before  the  German  invading  armies 
had  been  beaten  back  to  their  frontier,  it  be- 
came known  that  still  larger  forces  were  being 
massed  from  Thorn  and  Breslau.  There  had 
been  reports  before,  after  the  Russian  successes 
in  Oalicia,  of  the  hurrying  of  German  troops 
from  the  western  to  the  eastern  front.  Similar 
reports  now  were  indubitably  true.  It  was 
asserted  in  Petrograd  that  the  enemy  now  had 
no  fewer  than  3,000,000  men  facing  the  Polish 
frontier  ready  for  a  new  advance.  By  Novem- 
ber 10  the  Russians  had  not  only  driven  the 
enemy  out  of  Poland,  but  between  Kalisch 
and  Thorn  detachments  of  General  Ruzsky's 
arinies  penetrated  20  miles  into  German  terri- 
tory. At  the  same  date  other  Russian  troops 
of  General  Ivanoff's  forces  were  within  20  miles 
of  Cracow.  On  November  14  it  was  annoiuiced 
from  Petrograd  that  a  German  counter-offensive 
had  been  "  noticed  "  from  Thorn  in  the  direction 
of  Wloclawek. 

That  the  estimate  of  3,000,000  Austro- 
German  troops  on  the  I'olish  frontier  was  an 
exaggeration  we  may  well  believe.  In  llie 
operations  recently  described  there  had  ajij^a- 
rently  been  engaged  some  22  or  23  Army  ("orj)?. 


348 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAE. 


I 


RUSSIAN    PRIEST    BLESSING    MEN    IN    THE    TRENCHES. 


with  various  additions.  Among  these  were 
some  first  line  troops,  but  not  many.  Most  of 
these  liad  been  employed  in  the  last  efforts 
to  gain  a  definite  success  on  the  Western  front. 
Of  the  22  Army  Corps  probably  not  more  than 
5  were  active  German  Army  Corps.  With 
these  appear  to  have  been  8  Reserve  Corps, 
the  remaining  10  being  Landwelir  and  Land- 
sturm  formations. 

There  also  seems  to  have  been  a  certain 
mingling  of  Austro-Hungarian  troops  with  the 
German  armies.  In  addition,  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  forces  projjer,  under  command  of 
Duke  Albert  of  ^\'urtemburg,  seem  to  have 
been  divided  into  three  armies  of  some  three 
corps  each,  with  additional  units.  The  Austrian 
troops,  however,  had  suffered  so  severely  tliat 
the  formation  of  most  of  their  vinits  was  no\v 
most  irregular.  The  combined  effective  Austro- 
German  strength  on  this  frontier  probably 
amounted  to  about  2,000,000  men. 

Against  these  the  Russian  armies,  already 
great,  were  being  constantly  reinforced.  It 
was  supposed  that  early  in  November  the  total 
Russian  forces  from  Warsaw  to  the  Carpathians 
amounted  to  some  3o  army  corps,  of  which  15 
were  opposed  to  the  Austrians  in  Galicia  and 


the  rest  confronted  the  Germans  along  the 
Polish  frontier.  Of  these  Russian  troops  in 
Poland  (excluding  those  in  Galicia)  much  the 
greater  number  seem  to  have  been  concentrated 
on  the  southern  part  of  the  line,  towards  Cracow. 
Tn  this  direction  were  combined  both  those 
troops  which  had  driven  the  Austro-Gemiau 
army  from  Iwangorod  by  Kielce  to  Olknoz  and 
Cracow,  and  also  the  niain  army  which  hafl 
followed  the  bulk  of  the  Germans  retreating 
along  the  line  of  the  railway  from  Skierniewice  to 
Czestochowa.  The  sparsity  of  railways  in 
Poland,  and  the  absence  of  any  line  parallel 
to  the  frontier  on  that  side,  made  the  transfer 
of  large  numbei's  of  Russian  troops  from  one 
part  of  the  line  to  another — from  south  to  north, 
or  vice  versa — difficult.  The  Germans,  on  the 
other  hand,  had  at  their  service  a  most  complete 
railway  system,  by  whicli  their  mobility  was 
enormously  increased.  This  fact,  enabling  the 
Germans  to  mass  troops  easily  at  one  point  or 
another  much  more  quickly  than  their  enemy, 
was  sufficient  to  neutralize  a  very  considerable 
total  mmierical  superiority  on  the  part  of  tlie 
R  ussians. 

Taking  advantage  of  this  fact,  as  the  chief 
Russian  strength  was  on  the  left,  or  southern. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


349 


part  of  tlie  line,  whence  it  could  only  be 
laboriously  transferred,  the  Germans  threw  the 
weight  of  their  attack  on  the  comparatively 
weak  Russian  right. 

In  speaking  of  this  as  the  Russian  "  right," 
it  has  to  be  ahvays  borne  in  mind  that,  logically 
and  in  essence,  the  war  in  this  eastern  theatre 
extended  over  one  continuous  battle  front,  700 
or  800  miles  long,  from  the  Baltic  to  the  Car- 
pathians. In  that  huge  line  the  Thorn-Vistula 
region  was  not  much  above  the  Russian  centre. 
But  for  pm-poses  of  narration  it  is  necessary  to 
divide  this  great  field  into  sections  and  to  treat 
the  operations  in  East  Prussia,  in  Poland,  and 
in  Galicia  respectively,  as  separate  campaigns, 
though  they  were  in  truth  interdependent,  a 
thrust  in  one  quarter  when  parrieyl  being  replied 
to  by  a  covinter-tlirust  in  another. 

At  the  present  moment  it  was  in  the  southern 
area  that,  after  the  last  futile  attempt  on  War- 
saw, the  i^eril  of  Russian  invasion  of  Gern^an 
territory  looked  most  imminent.  Here  on  what 
is  generally  called  the  Czestochowa-Cracow 
line,  and  beyond  in  Galicia,  the  chief  Russian 
troops  were  massed.  And  the  shadow  of  these 
troops  almost  overhung  the  rich  industrial 
districts  of  Silesia.  At  the  same  time,  so  long  as 
Przemysl  held  out  and  Cracow  stood  firm, 
serious  Russian  advance  on  this  line  by  the 
valley  of  the  Oder  was  obviously  difficult. 
From  Cracow  north  to  Czestochowa,  again,  the 
<jrerman  defensive  position  was  very  strong. 
Rough,  broken  ground  lent  itself  to  defence,  and, 


as  a  Russian  official  communique  frankly 
remarked,  in  the  four  months  since  the  begin- 
ning of  the  war  the  Germans  had  been  able  to 
'■  fortifj'^  it  in  extraordinary  strength."'  The 
danger  to  Silesia,  then,  was  less  immediate  than 
at  first  sight  it  might  have  looked.  None  the 
less,  it  had,  if  possible,  to  be  removed.  But 
against  the  great  Russian  strength  in  this 
quarter  it  was  obviously  better  that  the  Germans 
should  confine  themselves  here  more  or  less  to 
defensive  action  behind  their  formidable 
defences  and  deliver  their  blow  against  the  more 
vulnerable  part  of  the  Russian  Une  further 
north.  A  success  there  would  just  as  sui'ely 
compel  withdra^\•al  on  the  Czestochowa-Cracow 
line  as  if  it  had  actually  been  achieved  on  that 
line. 

It  was,  it  will  be  remembered,  then,  from 
Thorn  towards  Wloclawek  that  the  first 
German  offensive  had  been  "  noticed "  on 
November  14.  This  offensive  was  pushed  with 
great  violence  along  the  left  side  of  the  Vistula 
and  by  the  railway  line  towards  Kutno  and 
Lowicz.  On  this  immediate  front  the  Russians 
do  not  appear  to  have  had  more  than  tliree 
army  corps,  and  the  CJerman  advance  soon 
assumed  the  character  of  another  and  more 
determined  thrust  at  Warsaw.  Tliis  was 
obviously  sound  strategy.  The  capture  of 
Warsaw  itself,  after  the  recent  failure,  would 
have  been  a  triumph  of  the  first  magnitude, 
while,  at  the  least,  it  was  calculated,  a  serious 
threat  to  it  would,  as  we  have  seen,  compel  the 


THE    ROLL    CALL. 


350 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


withdrawal  for  its  defence  of  a  large  part  of  the 
Ilussian  forces  in  the  south,  with  a  resultant 
relieving  of  the  pressure  on  Cracow. 

The  comparatively  small  Russian  strength 
in  this  region  between  the  Vistula  and  the 
Warta,  west  of  the  Bzura,  could  ofTer  no  effec- 
tive resistance  to  such  weight  as  the  Germans 
threw  upon  it.  So  rapid  was  the  German 
advance  that  by  November  16  it  had  already, 
from  its  base  from  Thorn  to  Wreschen,  reached 
a  line  from  Plock  to  Leczica  on  the  upper 
Bzura,  some  50  miles  inside  the  frontier,  and 
about  half  way  to  Warsaw.  Under  von 
Hindenburg,  the  force  Wiis  divided  into  two 
armies — the  left  or  northern  one  being  com- 
manded by  General  von  Morgan,  tlie  right  by 
General  von  Mackensen.  On  November  15-16 
tlie  Russians,  in  spite  of  their  inl'eriority  in 
numbers,  had  ^'entured  a  delaying  action 
against  von  Morgen  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Kutno.  They  were,  of  course,  driven  back, 
and   General   von  Hindenburg   announced  the 


RUSSIAN    NATIONAL    DANCE. 


result  as  a  great  victory,  claiming  to  have  taken 
28,000  Russian  prisoners.  The  news  was 
received  with  enthusiasm  in  Berlin,  and  von 
i^Iindonburg  was  rewarded  by  being  made  * 
Field-Marshal. 

On  the  following  day  MackerLsen".s  right 
successfully  engaged  a  Russian  force  between 
Dubie  and  Leczica,  driving  it  north-westward 
along  the  Bzm'a  towards  Lowicz.  Pressing  on 
the  left  flank  of  this  force  in  its  retirement,  the 
Germans  opened  a  gap  in  the  Russian  lines, 
into  which  they  drove  a  wedge  between  Stry- 
kow  and  Zgierz.  If  they  could  make  the 
penetration  of  the  Russian  line  at  this  point 
effective,  and  could  pour  troops  through  it  in 
any  strength,  the  Germans  believed  that  tliey 
had  the  game — and  Warsaw — in  their  hands. 
According  to  the  German  official  report,  issued 
in  January,  1915,  it  "now  looked  as  if  what 
had  been  originally  undertaken  merely  as  a 
counter-offensive  movement  to  relieve  the 
strain  on  Cracow,  might  be  converted  into  a 
great  success."  New  troops  were  therefore,  it 
is  declared,  hurried  up  from  Breslau.  It  is, 
however,  as  frequently,  only  possible  to  accept 
this  version  of  the  events  with  certain  modifica- 
tions. 

It  is  true  that  at  this  moment  the  Germans 
were  flushed  with  enthusiasni  and  full  of  tlie 
highest  hopes.  Disappointment  at  the  earlier 
Russian  successes  had  been  intense,  and  the 
relief  at  what  looked  like  von  Hindenburg's 
triumph  was  so  great  that  Berlin,  decorated 
and  wild  with  joy,  was  already  speaking  in 
exaggerated  terms  of  the  defeat  of  the  whole 
Russian  armies.  But  the  present  movement 
had  no  more  been  vmdertaken  as  a  mere  in- 
definite counter-offensive  for  the  purpose  of 
threatening  the  Russian  left  on  the  south,  tlian 
the  earlier  attempt  on  Warsaw  had-  been 
a  "reconnaissance."  Its  very  formidable 
character  had  been  apparent  from  the  begin- 
ning. The  victory  of  Kutno  was  no  such  great 
matter  as  the  Germans  claimed,  and  much 
happened,  which  is  slurred  over  in  the  German 
report,  between  it  and  the  penetration  of  the 
Russian  line. 

After  the  affair  at  Kutno  the  Russians  fell 
back  upon  the  line  of  the  Bzura.  The  Bzura 
itself  is  a  small  stream,  but  its  banks  are 
bordered  for  a  large  part  of  its  length  with 
wide  marshes,  which  form  a  most  formidable- 
obstacle  to  an  advancing  army.  Against  this 
obstacle  the  German  progress,  hitherto  so 
rapid,  was  definitely  held  up.     Time  to  bring 


THE     TIMES    HISTCRY     OF     THE    WAR. 


351 


AN    AUSTRIAN    ENCAMPMENT    IN    THE    CARPATHIANS. 


up  reinforceinents  to  this  part  of  their  Hne  was 
of  the  greatest  importance  to  the  Russians.  On 
November  18  fighting  was  in  progress  around 
Lodz  ;  on  the  20th.  between  Lowicz  and 
Skiemiewice.  On  the  23rd  the  Russians  claimed 
something  of  a  success  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Strykow,  and  from  that  date  to  the  end  of  the 
month  the  Germans  gained  no  advantage.  The 
Russian  armies  here  had  by  this  time  been 
heavUy  reinforced,  not  by  weakening  the 
armies  in  the  south,  but  by  bringing  up  new 
troops  from  the  east.  According  to  German 
versions,  considerable  forces  were  also  thrown 
across  the  Vistula  from  the  right  bank  between 
Novo  Georgievsk  and  Plock.  At  all  events, 
after  covering  the  first  50  miles  of  his  advance 
in  three  days,  in  the  following  fortnight  von 
Hindenburg  beat  in  v.ain  against  the  Russian 
line  along  the  Bzura  and  to  and  beyond  Lodz. 

During  all  this  fortnight  fighting  was  of  the 
most  stubborn  and  desperate  character.  The 
Russian  official  announcements  recorded  the 
fact  from  day  to  day.  On  November  26  there 
was  "  some  advantage  to  our  troops."  On 
November  27  the  action  "  continues  to  develop 
favourably."  On  other  days  there  was  "  no 
change "  or  "  nothing  important  to  report." 
What  was,  however,  of  the  utmost  importance 


was  that  the  Germans  were  not  progressing. 
On  the  last  day  of  the  month  the  fighting  was 
still  "  extremely  stubborn."  The  triumphant 
German  predictions  following  on  the  incident 
of  the  penetration  of  the  Russian  line  between 
Strykow  and  Zgierz  were  by  no  means  being 
fulfilled.  It  is  necessary  to  explain  what  had 
happened  at  that  point. 

The  German  troops  which  operated  at 
Strykow  and  Zgierz  seem  to  have  come  from 
two  directions.  One  body  had  forced  the 
crossing  of  the  Bzura  marshes  at  Piontek  ; 
another  appears  to  have  crossed  the  Bzura, 
beyond  the  limit  of  the  marshes,  east  of  Leczica. 
At  all  events  the  German  official  statement 
spoke  of  their  armies  advancing  "  on  both 
sides  "  of  that  place.  Between  Zgierz  and 
Strykow  two  army  corps  with  some  extra 
units — probably  100,000  men  in  all — forced 
their  way  north-east  of  Lodz  as  far  as  Brze- 
ziny.  If  the  penetrating  force  had  been  in 
such  definitely  superior  strength  as  to  be  able 
to  crumple  back  the  enemy's  line  to  the  north- 
ward, the  coup  might  have  been  of  almost 
decisive  importance.  But  Russian  reinforce- 
ments were  by  this  time  arriving,  coming  by  the 
railway  from  Warsaw,  and  by  the  time  the 
thrusting    corps    had     reached     Brzeziny     the 


352 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


ENTRANCE    TO    AN    AUSTRIAN 
ENCAMPMENT. 

"Russian  line  had  been  so  strengthened  that  it 
was  able  to  close  in  on  their  rear.  Later 
German  troops,  hurrying  after  the  advance 
force,  had  their  hands  full  in  warding  off 
Russian  attacks  from  both  sides,  and  it  looked 
for  two  or  three  days  as  if  the  two  isolated 
corps  would  be  compelled  to  surrender  or  be 
annihilated.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Russian 
line  behind  them  was  not  held  in  equal  strength 
at  all  points,  and  they,  or  their  shattered 
remnants,  were  able  to  force  their  way  back. 

These  two  corps  seem  to  have  had  terrible 
experiences  in  their  endeavours  to  find  a  way 
of  retreat.  Roughly  handled  around  Brzeziny, 
the  force  seems  to  have  been  broken  up  and 
fragments  were  described  as  roaming  the 
frozen  and  desolated  land  "  like  a  pack  of 
hungry  wolves."  The  greater  part  of  those 
which  escaped  appear  to  have  made  their  way 
northward  by  Bielawy  and  Sobota,  between 
whicli  places  they  were  attacked  by  a  Riissian 
force  and  again  severely  mauled.  Ultimately, 
of  about  100,000  men,  something  like  40,000 
seem  to  have  got  back.  Among  them  was  the 
remnant  of  a  regiment  of  the  Prussian  Guards. 
Besides  the  killed  and  wounded  tho  Russians 
took  many  prisoners.  It  is  known  that  5,000 
were  taken  one  day  and  6,000  on  the  next.  A 
few   days   later   \\'arsaw   \\as   full   of   German 


prisoners,  and  apparently  the  two  corps  lost 
almost  all  their  guns.  The  news  of  the  catas 
trophe,  even  in  the  modified  form  in  which  it 
was  permitted  to  the  public  to  know  of  it, 
brought  great  depression  in  Berlin,  where  a 
comjjlete  and  brilliant  victory  by  Field-Marshal 
von  Hindenbiu'g  had  been  confidently  antici- 
pated. In  importance,  as  in  the  numbers  lost, 
it  much  ovitweighed  the  German  success  at 
Kutno.  Both,  however,  were  only  incidents  of 
the  struggle  on  this  front  which  went  on 
unc^easingly  and  on  a  gigantic  scale,  and  the 
issue  of  which  was  by  the  end  of  November 
definitely  turning  in  favour  of  Russia. 

While  these  tilings  had  been  going  on  in  the 
region  from  the  Vistula  to  Lodz,  fighting  had 
also  been  in  progress  farther  south.  In  support 
of  the  armies  advancing  on  Warsaw,  other 
German  armies  had  pushed  forward  along  the 
railway  from  Kalisch  by  Sieradz  towards  Lask 
and  from  Wielun  towards  Piotrkow  ;  and  the 
montli  of  December  opened  with  an  extra- 
ordinaril}'  confused  situation  along  the  whole 
front.  It  was  well  described  at  the  time  as  being 
less  like  one  continuous  action  than  "  a  series 
of  more  or  less  simultaneously  proceeding 
independent  battles,"  in  which  fortune  veered 
from  side  to  side.  Retreats  at  one  point  were 
counter-balanced  by  advances  at  another,  and 
at  many  places,  in  the  course  of  isolated 
combats,  troops  from  either  side  pushed  far 
ahead  of  their  general  line  and  were  fighting  in 
the  rear  of  the  enemy  on  either  side  of  them. 
It  is  believed  that  duriiig  this  period  the 
German  armies  were  reinforced  by  more  corps 
transferred  from  the  Western  front. 

It  would  be  useless  to  unravel  and  follow  up 
each  thread  in  all  the  tangled  skein.  The 
incident  which  stood  out  most  conspicuously 
from  the  txirmoil  in  the  early  part  of  December 
was  the  occupation  by  the  Germans  on  the 
6th  of  the  month  of  Lodz,  of  which  they  had 
not  had  possession  since  their  hunting  had  been 
interrupted  there  in  October.  Lodz  was  a  town 
of  considerable  commercial  importance,  the 
"  Manchester  of  Poland."  Since  the  beginning 
of  the  nineteenth  century  it  had  sprung  from 
a  village  of  a  couple  of  hundred  inhabitants  to 
a  manufacturing  and  commercial  centre  with  a 
population  of  nearly  half  a  million.  Occupied 
and  reoccupied  as  it  had  been  since  the  begin- 
ning of  the  war,  with  battles  raging  around  it 
for  weeks  together,  Lodz  had  suffered  terribly 
and  become  only  a  shadow  of  its  usual  busy  self. 
Much  the  larger  part  of  the  population  had  fled 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


353 


THE    WAR    IN    POLAND. 

1.   Russian  prisoners  being  marched  through   Lodz.     2.   A  wrecked  village.      3.   Sacks  of  flour  burned  by 
the  Germans  before  their  flight— two  Russian  soldiers  on   the  left.     4.   German  field  post  oflice   at    Lodz. 

5.   A  destroyed  frontier  station. 


354 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OE    THE    WAR. 


AN    ENCOUNTER    BETWEEN    RUSSIAN    AND    GERMAN    OUTPOSTS. 


to  Warsaw,  and  those  who  remained  had 
suffered  serious  privations,  food  being  abnost 
unobtainable. 

The  Germans  celebrated  the  capture  of  Lodz 
as  a  great  triumph,  and  claimed  that  they  had 
taken  a  large  number  of  prisoners  and  war 
booty.  The  Russians  asserted  that  its  evacua- 
tion had  only  been  a  strategic  move  to  enable 
them  to  take  up  a  shorter  and  more  advan- 
tageoas  hne  and  categorically  declared  that 
they  "  did  not  lose  a  single  man "  in  the 
operation.  It  was  even  asserted  that  for 
fifteen  hours  the  Germans  shelled  empty 
trenches  from  which  the  enemv*  had  retired  on 


the  preceding  day.  The  truth  undoubtedly  is 
that  the  Russians  would  not  have  given  the 
place  up,  if  only  for  its  moral  effect,  unless  they 
had  been  obhged  to  do  so.  Its  surrender  was 
a  reverse,  and  the  Germans  were  justified  in 
claiming  the  acquisition  of  it  as  a  success  of 
some  importance.  At  the  same  time,  it  had 
become  very  embarrassing  to  the  Russian 
campaign.  Its  defence  occupied  a  large  nimabor 
of  troops  and  it  constituted  a  costly  saUent  in  a 
line  which  was  a  good  deal  stronger  after  it  had 
been  abandoned.  There  is,  moreover,  little 
doubt,  from  the  narratives  of  individual 
Russian  officers  engaged  in  the  operation,  that 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


355 


the  Russian  official  statement  as  to  the  de- 
Uberate  nature  of  the  retirement,  the  reluctance 
of  the  Germans  to  advance,  and  the  freedom 
from  casualties  was  substantially  acciirate. 

But  the  Germans  needed  whatever  comfort 
could  be  drawn  from  the  incident.  It  was  known 
that  they  had  promised  themselves  to  spend 
their  Clu'istmas  in  Warsaw  ;  but  it  was  plain 
by  now  that  the  attempt  to  reach  Warsaw  had 
failed.  Ner  had  they  succeeded  in  compelling  the 
Russians  to  withdraw  any  material  portion  of 
th.e  armies  which  threatened  Cracov\',  either  in 
Southern  Poland  or  in  Galicia.  If  von  Hinden- 
burg's  offensive  had  attained  any  object  it  may 
have  been  the  prevention  of  an  invasion  of 
Silesia.  But  it  is  questionable  whether  that 
could  not  have  been  as  effectively  prevented,  at 
less  expense  in  German  lives  and  with  heavier 
loss  to  the  enemy,  by  awaiting  attack  along  the 
frontier.  The  course  of  the  campaign  had 
clearly  shown  how  rapidly  the  German  advance 
lost  its  momentum  as  it  drew  farther  into 
Poland  and  farther  away  from  its  railways. 
On  the  other  hand,  every  mile  that  the  enemy 
advanced  eastward  made  the  Russian  problems 
of  reinforcement  and  supply  less  difiticult. 

About  the  middle  of  December  the  German 
attacks  appreciably  decrea.sed  in  violence. 
Much  stubborn  fighting  still  went  on,  as  on  the 
1 5th  and  1  6th  of  the  month,  about  Sochacze\v. 
A  few  days  later  some  bodies  of  German  troops 
succeeded    in    crossing    the    Bzura,    but    were 


beaten  back  or  wiped  out.  About  the  22nd 
and  23rd  there  was  heavy  fighting  about 
Piotrkow,  and  also  near  Bolimow,  between 
Lowicz  and  Skierniewice.  But  this  was  ground 
which  the  Germans  had  reached  a  month 
earlier,  without  being  able  to  get  any  farther. 
Early  in  December  the  Germans  attempted  a 
diversion  by  a  wide  flanking  movement  from 
East  Prussia,  directed  against  Warsaw  from 
the  north,  which,  however,  though  a  part  of 
this  general  conflict,  belongs  geographically  to 
the  narrative  of  events  in  that  region.  It  was, 
though  dashingly  pushed,  not  made  with  any 
great  strength,  and  was  easily  mot  and  beaten 
back  by  the  Russians. 

The  last  v\eek  of  the  year  saw  little  of  any 
importance  in  this  region.  Between  Decem- 
ber 20  and  25  the  Russian  hne,  as  a  whole,  fell 
back  a  little,  not  so  much  under  pressure  as 
for  the  purpose  of  taking  up  a  better  position 
on  a  straighter  front.  Both  sides  were  then 
content  to  dig  and  entrench  themselves  along 
a  line  which  ran  from  the  Vistula  along  the 
Bzura  and  Rawka  to  Tomaszow.  Thence  sonth- 
\\'ard  confused  fighting  continued  along  the 
Pilitsa  to  the  neighbourhood  of  Xovo-Radomsk, 
and  thence  along  the  Nida,  where  in  the  last 
days  of  the  year  the  Russians  claimed  some 
minor  successes  with  the  capture  of  consider- 
able numbers  of  prisoners. 

Once  more  we  must  pick  up  the  thread  of 


^:- 


RUSSIAN    AMBULANCE    AND    TRANSPORT    IN    POLAND. 


856 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


RUSSIAN    PRISONERS     TAKEN     IN     EAST     PRUSSIA 


events  in  the  Galician  theatre,  where  we  saw 
how  the  Russians,  at  the  beginning  of  Novem- 
ber, after  sviccessfnlly  resisting  all  e-.^orts  of  the 
Austrians  to  force  a  crossing  of  the  San,  had 
themselves  broken  across  the  river  and  driven 
the  enemy  westward.  In  this  final  battle  on 
the  San  it  was  claimed  that  they  took  12,000 
Austrian  prisoners  with  120  ofificers.  The 
Austrians  seem  to  have  fallen  back  in  great 
disorder,  and  contemporary  reports  declared 
that  they  were  lacking  in  both  food  and 
amniunition,  and  that  they  suffered  serious 
ravages  from  cholera.  Once  more  the  tide 
swept  past  Przemysl,  which,  again,  and  finally, 
as  it  was  to  prove,  became  completely  invested. 
By  November  13  the  Russian  advance  cavalry, 
following  on  the  heels  of  the  enemy,  was  within 
thirteen  miles  of  Cracow,  which  was  now 
practically  invested  on  two  sides.  It  was  on 
this  and  the  following  clays,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered, that  the  German  offensive  had  begun 
to  make  itself  felt  from  Thorn.  We  have 
seen,  however,  that  the  Russians  did  not 
withdraw  any  of  their  strength  from  their 
southern  front  to  oppose  the  German  advance. 
The  pressure  on  Cracow,  instead  of  loosening, 
increased.  By  the  beginning  of  December 
Russian  troops  were  within  eight  miles  of  Cra- 
cow,   and    on    the    -Ith    of    the    month    it    was 


announced  that  they  had  occupied  Wieliczka, 
and  were  within  three  and  a  half  miles  of  the 
outer  fortifications.  On  the  same  da\'  Russian 
cavalry  was  reported,  on  the  other  side  of 
the  Carpathians,  to  be  raiding  Hungarian 
territory  as  far  as  Bartfeld,  20  miles  over  the 
border. 

In  this  advance  towards  Cracow,  although 
the  Austrians  were  more  or  less  completely 
demoralised,  the  Russians  had  formidable 
defensive  positions  to  carry  besides  the  succes- 
sive rivers  to  cross.  All  the  operations  seem 
to  have  been  performed  with  impetuous 
gallantry.  The  resistance  naturally  increased 
as  the  fighting  swept  w-estward.  Bochnia. 
strongly  fortified,  had  to  be  carried  by  assault, 
and  the  Russians  claim  to  have  taken  2,000 
prisoners  with  ten  guns  and  many  machine 
guns.  The  Raba  river  had  to  be  crossed  by  a 
ford  in  the  face  of  the  eneniy's  fire,  through  ice- 
floes and  bitterly  cold  water  up  to  the  neck- 
At  ^^'ieliczka  trenches  and  barbed  wire  en- 
tanglements were  rushed  with  the  bayonet 
when  the  temperattire  was  below  zero.  At  the 
end  of  such  experiences,  the  Russian  General 
Staff  was  able  to  say  that  "  the  moral  of  our 
troops,  seasoned  by  fortj^-five  days  of  almost 
continuous  fighting,  is,  according  to  the  report^! 
of   army   commanders,   of   the   highest   order." 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


357 


At  this  rrioment  the  safety«of^racow  seemed 
seriously  threatened. 

Tliroughout  the  war,  both  in  the  East  and 
West,  the  characteristics  of  German  strategy 
had  been  the  resourcefulness  and  vigour  of  its 
counter-attacks  ;  even  if  that  resourcefulness 
itself  was  of  a  somewhat  stereotyped  character. 
A  rebuff  in  one  quarter  was  immediately 
countered  by  an  attack,  as  swift  as  possible,  in 
another,  generally  delivered  at  the  remotest 
point  on  one  or  other  flanlc  at  wliich  it  could  be 
delivered  without  becoming  .  ineffective  as  a 
retort.  Von  Hindenburg  proved  himself  so 
adept  at  this  particular  manoeuvre  that  he  gave 
it  an  individual  character,  stamped  with  his 
particular  genius.  To  reUeve  the  pressure  on 
Cracow  and  Silesia  we  have  seen  how  he  struck 
at  once  for  Warsaw  along  the  very  banks  of  the 
Vistula,  and  when  that  attack  began  to  spend 
itself  he  had  even  tried  to  swing  round  from 
farther  north  and  reach  Warsaw  from  East 
Prussia.  So  now,  when  the  danger  to  Cracow 
grew  imminent,  he  struck  again,  not  on  that 
immediate  front  but  far  to  the  southward  along 
and  round  the  Carpathians. 

For  two  months  and  more  the  Russians  had, 
except  for  the  one  Austrian  advance  to  the 
San,  been  practically  in  control  of  Galicia  up 
to   the   mountains.      After   the   failure   of   the 


Atistrians  on  the  San  it  was  announced  in 
Petrograd,  on  November  18,  that  Russian 
troops  were  "  attaclcing  Austrian  rearguards  " 
at  the  mouths  of  both  the  Dukla  and  Uszok 
Passes.  By  the  25th  they  seemed  to  have  forced 
the  Lupkow  Pass,  along  the  railway  line  from 
Sanok,  and  to  have  occupied  Mezo-Laborcz  on 
the  Hungarian  side,  taking  3,500  Austrian 
prisoners,  three  railway  trains  and  some 
machine  guns.  On  the  last  day  of  November 
it  was  announced  that  more  prisoners  had  been 
made  "  in  the  Carpathians,"  that  the  Buko- 
wina  was  cleared  of  Austrians  and  Czernowitz 
reoccupied.  On  December  1,  after  ten  days' 
fierce  fighting,  the  Riissians  claim  to  have 
cari'ied  by  assault  a  very  strong  position 
along  the  crest  of  the  mountains  by  Koniec- 
zuka,  a  point  just  south  of  Gorlice,  between 
the  Dukla  and  Tamow  passes.  Altogether 
the  number  of  Austrian  prisoners  taken  in 
the  last  half  of  November  was  now  said  to 
amount  to  over  50,000,  with  more  than  600 
officers. 

Fighting  continued  tlii'ough  the  first  week  of 
December  all  along  the  Carpathians,  but  the 
Russians  now  found  that  their  opponents  at 
many  points  here  were  no  longer  Austrian  but 
German.  Advices  from  Petrograd  to  London 
said  tliat  "  the  Austrian  armies  around  Cracow 


A    POLISH    VILLAGE    SET    ON    IIRE    BY    THE    GERMANS. 


nj3 


THE    TIMES    HTSTOJiY    OF    THE    WAR. 


RUSSIANS    WITH    HAND    GRENADES. 

have  ceased  to  exist  as  an  independent  force 
,  .  .  they  are  all  mixed  up  with  Germans." 
A  force,  largely  German,  appeared  on  the  River 
Dvmaje<3  near  Novo-Sandcc,  and  at  various 
points  farther  east  German  troops  began 
appearing  north  of  the  Carpathians.  A  new 
German  offensive  on  this  extreme  left  flank  had 
begun. 

On  December  14  the  Russian  General  Staff 
announced  in  its  characteristically  unpertiubed 
way  that  it  had  "  discovered  the  enemy  trjang 
to  assume  the  offensive."  On  the  16th  it  was 
said  that  Austro-German  columns  were  "  pour- 
ing over  the  Dukla  into  Galicia."  It  is  believed 
that  at  this  time  tliree  new  German  army  corps 
had  been  sent  to  the  eastern  front  (maldng 
nine  new  corps  since  the  beginning  of  these 
operations),  while  tliree  Austrian  corps  had 
been  withdrawn  from  Serljia.  The  new  armies 
pouring  into  Galicia  by  the  mountain  passes 
were  estimated  at  170,000  men.  The  move- 
ment was  quite  ineffective.  It  compelled 
the  Russian  raiding  parties  which  had  invaded 
Hungary  to  retire  into  Galicia,  and  to  that 
extent  it  allayed  the  panic  which  was  beginning 
to  be  felt  in  Budapest  and  Vienna.  The 
extreme  southern  end  of  the  1-lu.ssiau  line  below 
Cracow  was  pushed  back  from  advanced 
positions  west  of  the  Raba  to  and  across  the 
Dunajec.  But  the  Russians  never  regarded  the 
diversion  in  this  quarter  seriously,  and  the 
Austro-German  advance  was  easily  checked  and 


held.  On  December  23  General  Sukhomlinoff,. 
tiie  Russian  IMinister  for  War,  announced  that 
it  had  been  "  stopped  absoliit<ily." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  so  long  as  Przemysl  held 
out  and  Cracow  stood  firm,  it  is  improbable 
that  the  Russians  could  have  entertained  the 
idea  of  invading  Hungary  in  any  force.  To  push 
an  array  any  distance  across  the  mountains  as 
the  situation  then  was  would  have  been  almost 
tantamount  to  giving  it  as  a  hostage  to  the 
enemy.  The  Russian  position  in  Western 
GaUcia  and  in  Poland  would  have  to  be  much 
more  assured  before  real  invasion  could  be 
imdertaken  without  great  risk.  And  before  that 
time  came  there  was  to  be  a  long  winter  with 
terrible  and  prolonged  fighting  in  the  deep 
snows  and  bitter  cold  of  the  mountains.  That 
will  be  dealt  with  in  its  appropriate  place 
hereafter. 

The  end  of  the  year  saw  the  war  fi\'e  months 
old.  The  result  of  the  struggle  during  those 
five  months  had  been  sufficiently  favourable  to 
the  Allied  cause  in  the  east ;  much  more  favour- 
able than,  at  the  beginning,  had  appeared 
probable.  Germany,  held  on  a  rigid  front  in 
France  and  Belgimn,  had  been  unable,  as  she^ 
had  expected,  to  ttirn  her  whole  strength  to  the 


AUSTRIANS    BRINGING    A   SHELL    TO 
THE    GUN    POSITION. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAL'. 


359 


AUSTRIANS    ADJUSTING    A    HEAVY    SIEGE    HOWITZER. 


eastern  front.  Against  sucli  offensive  as  Ger- 
many had  attempted  in  East  Prussia  and 
against  the  advance  of  Austria  in  the  south, 
Russia  had  shown  herself  much  less  unready  in 
massing  her  first  armies  than  had  been  ex- 
pected. Those  armies  had  proved  themselves 
a  match  for  Germans  and  Austrians  alike.  The 
high  quality  of  Russian  strategy  and  the  gallantry 
of  the  Russian  soldier  had  been  demonstrated 
beyond  dispute.  For  five  months  fighting 
such  as  the  world  had  never  seen  had  raged  over 
a  front  of  over  700  miles,  from  the  Baltic 
to  the  frontiers  of  Rumania.  Dtu-ing  that 
period  not  less  than  0,000,000  men  had  been 
engaged  on  the  two  sides.  At  the  end  Ru.ssia 
was  stronger  than  ever,  Germany  had  suffered 
reverses  at  least  as  heavy  as  any  which  she  had 
inflicted  on  the  enemy,  and  the  military  power 
<)i  Austria  was  broken  and  discredited.  Losses 
on  both  sides  had  been  heavy,  but  the  combined 
losses  of  Germany  and  Austria  were  certainly 
heavier  than  those  which  Russia  had  suffered  ; 
and  Russia  was  much  better  able  to  stand  losses 
than  either  of  her  opponents.  At  the  end  of  the 
year  it  was  announced  that  the  prisoners  in 
Russia  included   i;il,737  Germans,  with    1,140 


officers,  and  22 1,447  Austrians  and  3,186  officers, 
or  a  total  of  4,326  officers  and  353,184  men. 

The  saddest  feature  of  all  the  operations  in 
this  last  part  of  1914  upon  this  front  was  the 
devastation  wrought  in  Poland.  It  is  a 
subject  which  will  be  dealt  with  more  fully 
liereafter.  We  have  seen  that  the  Polish 
people,  when  they  chose  the  path  of  loyalty, 
must  have  known  that  they  would  pay  a  terrible 
price.  For  five  months  now  the  contending 
armies  had  swept  backwards  and  forwards  over 
the  land.  Almost  the  whole  of  Poland  had 
become  one  vast  battlefield.  Farirts,  villages, 
and  towns  had  been  almost  obliterated  ;  pro- 
vinces had  been  laid  utterly  waste.  In  their 
first  advance  the  German  armies  had  behaved 
with  restraint.  On  their  retreat  they  do  not 
seem  to  have  committed  the  unspeakable 
outrages  that  thej^  had  perpetrated  in  Belgium, 
at  least  in  such  numbers.  But  they  had 
systematically  ruined  the  land,  not  only  by  the 
destruction  of  railways,  roads,  buildings,  and 
bridges  to  delay  the  advance  of  the  piu"suing 
Russians,  but  by  the  most  exhaustive  plunder- 
ing and  carrying  away  of  all  discoverable 
supplies  of  food  and  clothing,  and  everytliing 


360 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


i 


AUSTRIAN    ENGINEERS    CONSTRUCTING    A    TRESTLE    BRIDGE. 


else  for  which  they  could  find  a  use,  or  which 
could  give  any  comfort  to  the  enemy.  The 
condition  to  which  such  of  the  population  as 
remained  in  the  devastated  region  was  reduced 
was,  as  winter  came  on,  pitiable  beyond  descrip- 
tion.    The  world  at  the  time  heard  less  of  the 


sufferings  of  Poland  than  of  those  of  Belgium, 
and  Poland  had  not  the  same  ready  hands 
reached  out  to  succour  her.  Nowhere  did 
Belgimn  suffer  starv^ation  and  frozen  misery  on 
the  scale  on  which  they  stalked  through  Poland 
that  winter. 


CHAPTER    LX. 

SECOND  AND  THIRD  AUSTRIAN 

INVASIONS  OF  SERBIA:  FALL  AND 

RECAPTURE  OF  BELGRADE. 


Serbian  Strategy  after  the  Battle  of  the  Jadar — Causes  of  Delay — Invasion  of  Syrmia — 
Mistakes  and  INIisfgrtunes — Serbs  Retire — The  Second  Austrian  Invasion — Putnik's 
Strategy — Austrian  Failure — The  Third  Austrian  Invasion — Initial  Success — Capture 
of  Valievo — Serbian  Depression — Faxl  of  Belgrade — The  Great  Serbian  Rally — Battte 
of  Suvobor — Recapture  of  Belgrade — Rout  of  the  Austrians — Austrian  Atrocities  in 
Serbia — Their  Bombakdment  of  the  Serbian  Capital. 


THE  failure  of  the  Serbian  Staff  to 
order  an  immediate  pursuit  of  the 
routed  Austro-Hungarian  Armj- 
after  the  battle  of  the  Jadar  was 
the  subject  of  much  adverse  comment  in  some 
quarters.  That  the  enemy  was  a  beaten  rabble 
when  he  crossed  the  frontier  rivers  is  beyond 
doubt,  and  the  obvious  course  would  have  been 
for  the  Serbs  to  follow  up  their  victory  and 
run  the  fugitives  to  earth.  It  must  be  conceded, 
however,  that  General  Putnik  and  his  advisers 
were  fully  alive  to  the  importance  of  driving 
home  their  advantage  to  the  hilt,  and  that 
very  weighty  reasons  intervened  to  persuade 
them  to  call  off  their  troops.  No  part  of  the 
army  had  been  awaiting  the  attack  in  the 
district  in  which  the  battle  of  the  Jadar  was 
fouglit.  The  troops  which  bore  the  brunt  of 
the  fighting  had,  on  the  contrary,  been  obliged 
to  undertake  a  series  of  forced  marches  before 
they  made  contact  with  the  enemy,  a,nd,  once 
on  the  scene,  they  entered  into  a  fierce  and 
prolonged  combat  with  a  determined  and  well- 
equipped  foe.  The  Serbs  were,  therefore, 
more  or  less  physically  tired  before  th(!  invaders 
had  been  chased  back  into  Austrian  territory. 
Vol.  I  n.— Part  36 


Further,  the  divisions  which  had  been  held  in 
reserve  and  which  came  into  action  towards 
the  end  of  the  battle  were  even  more  fatigued, 
for  they  had  been  marched  about  from  one 
sector  to  another  as  the  fortunes  of  battle 
dictated,  and  finally  entered  the  arena  after 
their  powers  of  resistance  had  already  imdergone 
a  certain  strain.  This  fact  taken  alone,  how- 
ever, would  have  provided  no  adequate  excuse 
for  the  subsequent  Serbian  inactivity.  The 
Austrians  were  no  less  fatigued  tlien  they  were, 
and,  for  the  rest,  a  few  days'  repose  would 
have  served  to  reinvigorate  the  men.  There 
were  other  and  more  potent  reasons,  originating 
in  that  Serbian  unreadiness  for  war  to  which 
concrete  reference  has  already  been  made, 
which  had  a  serious  and  decisive  bearing  upon 
the  situation.  Among  these  the  shortage  of 
rifles  was  not  the  least  important.  The  Jadar 
battle  had,  of  course,  been  fought  and  won 
despite  this  deficiency  ;  but  an  incursion  into 
enemy  territory  would  possibly  have  neces- 
sitated the  employment  of  all  the  reserve 
forces  in  the  firing  line,  and  it  was  precisely 
these  reinforcements  which  had  hitherto  re- 
mained unarmed  in  the  rear.     The  tliird  and 


Gl 


362 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


SERBIAN    OFFICERS    EXAMINING    A    STAFF    MAP. 


most  weighty  reason  lay  in  the  absence  of  the 
material  necessary  to  effect  a  crossing  of  the 
rivers. 

The  Drina  is  no  ordinary  water-way.  Rising 
in  the  tors  of  the  Bosnian  hills  and  periodically 
fed  by  important  tributaries,  it  rushes  north- 
wards to  its  junction  with  the  Save.  Ever 
swift,  often  torrential,  it  has  washed  out  a 
bed  of  imposing  width,  and  by  a  constant 
cutting  of  new  courses  has  created  a  series 
of  deltas.  The  local  facilities  for  the  construc- 
tion of  pontoon  bridges  consisted  of  boats, 
barges,  and  the  crude  pontoons  of  the  curious 
water-mills  which  are  a  feature  of  this  territory. 
At  different  stages  of  the  war  both  armies 
dismantled  these  latter  Installations,  flung 
the  mills  and  wheels  into  the  water,  and  com- 
mandeered the  pontoons  for  the  purposes 
of  bridge-building.  In  the  period  under  dis- 
cussion, however,  the  Austrians  had  had  the 
advantage  of  first  choice.  Profiting  by  their 
unopposed  advance,  they  had  seized  and 
utilized  every  suitable  floating  structure,  and 
despite  the  precipitate  natiu-e  of  their  retreat, 
they  had,  fortunately  for  them,  succeeded  in 
massing  the  boats  on  their  own  shore.  The 
Serbs,  it  is  true,  possessed  military  pontoon 
trains,  but  with  the  exception  of  those  captured 


from  the  Turks  at  Komnanovo  in  1912,  they 
were  composed  of  inferior  wooden  constructions 
and  were  not  only  inefficient,  but  insufficient 
to  make  up  the  number  of  bridges  which 
offensive  operations  in  Bosnia  would  have 
necessitated.  Finally,  it  was  ever-incumbent 
upon  the  Serbians  to  bear  in  mind  the  fact  that 
from  the  very  commencement  of  hostilities 
they  had  put  es'ery  available  man  into  the 
field  ;  they  had  no  reserves,  and  they  were 
engaged  in  a  life-and- death  struggle  with  a  foe 
whose  resources  at  that  time  were  almost 
boundless. 

As  a  matter  of  actual  fact,  the  army  was  not 
sufficiently  strong  to  undertake  the  defence  of 
any  longer  line  than  that  provided  by  the 
frontiers  of  its  own  country,  and  as  events 
fell  out  it  was  demonstrated  that  the  wisdom  of 
General  Putnik  in  wisliing  to  keep  his  men  in 
Serbia  was  abundantly  justified. 

Dm-ing  the  twelve  days  which  followed  the 
battle  of  the  Jadar  a  comparative  calm  pre- 
vailed over  the  entire  front.  At  least  one 
of  the  Austrian  Ai-my  Corps  (the  4th  Corps  of 
three  divisions)  was  known  to  have  withdrawn  ; 
the  others  had  been  sadly  battered,  and  all 
available  evidence  combined  to  suggest  that 
the     Hapsburg     Government     had,     as     their 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


368 


amusing  post-Jadar  comnitinique  suggested. 
adjourned  a  renewal  of  their  offensive  to  a 
more  favourable  occasion.  In  the  meantime. 
Russian  operations  in  Galicia  had  progressed 
with  almost  unhoped-for  rapidity  and  success, 
and  a  great  Austrian  Army  had  been  routed 
at  Lemberg.  At  this  time  a  general  tendency 
to  underrate  the  military  resources  of  Austria- 
Hungary  had  developed,  and  the  Serbs,  having 
eaten  of  the  sweets  of  victory,  were  eager  to 
prosecute  the  combat  on  foreign  soil.  They 
were  greatly  encouraged  in  this  ambition 
by  at  least  one  of  their  powerful  Allies.  All 
these  considerations  played  their  respective 
parts  in  persuading  General  Putnik  to  under- 
take a  penetration  into  Synnia— an  expedition 
which  in  reality  was  intended  to  be  but  the  first 
and  necessary  phase  of  a  general  invasion  of 
Bosnia. 

While  the  strengthening  of  General  Potiorek's 
forces  in  Bosnia  by  driving  down  troops  from 
the  north  was  rendered  exceedingly  difficult, 
if  not  impossible,  by  reason  of  the  sparsity  of 
railways,  the  network  of  communications  in 
Syrmia  permitted  the  speedy  concentration 
of  considerable  numbers  of  the  enemy  on  the 
Serbian  frontier  lying  between  the  Drina 
river    and    Belgrade.     General    Putnik's    first 


object  was,  therefore,  to  protect  the  western 
lialf  of  his  northern  border  by  seizing  the 
territory  l\ang  between  the  Save  and  the 
Danube,  and  establishing  himself  in  strength 
on  the  dominating  mountain  range  of  Frushka- 
gora.  By  this  manoeuvre  he  would  have 
prevented  the  reinforcement  of  the  Austrian 
Army  in  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  and  could 
have  proceeded  with  his  offensive  in  those 
Serbian  piovinces  in  comparative  security. 
The  idea  was  rendered  the  more  attractive 
by  the  known  fact  that  the  enemy's  forces  in 
Synnia  were  by  no  means  strong,  and  con- 
sisted only  of  the  29th  Division  of  the  9th  Army 
Corps,  the  38th  and  68th  Infantry  Regiments 
of  the  Common  Army,  the  21st  Jaeger  Bat- 
talion, the  12th,  13th,  27th,  and  28th  Landsturm 
regiments  and  6  to  8  bataillons  de  marche.* 

The  task  of  invading  Synnia  was  entrusted 
to  the  1st  Army,  composed,  for  the  purpose,  of 
two  divisions,  and  the  Independent  Cavalry 
Division.  On  the  left  wing  support  was  to  be 
rendered  by  a  division  in  Matchva,  while  a 
detaclunent  known  as  the  "  Detachment  of 
Belgrade"    was    to     cooperate     on    the    right. 


*  Bataillons  de  marche  were  made    up  of  the  remain.s 
of  other  regiments  and  recruits. 


A    SERBIAN    SIEGE    GUN    IN    ACTION    BEHIND    BELGRADE. 


364 


IHE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


THE    PRINCE    REGENT    ALEXANDER    OF    SERBIA 
Observing  the  effect  of  Artillery  Fire  on  Austrian  Forts  opposite  Belgrade. 


One  Second  Ban  division  was  moved  up  to 
Obrenovatz,  and  the  rest  of  the  Serbian  forces 
remained  on  their  old  positions  on  the  Drina. 

For  the  development  of  the  strategy  a  sector 
of  the  Save  was  chosen  lying  almost  midway 
between  Matchva  and  Belgrade,  where  the  river 
makes  a  loop-like  incursion  into  Serbia,  knowTi 
as  the  Kupinski  Kut.  For  all  miUtary  purposes 
both  banlis  of  the  Save  were  here  in  possession 
of  the  Serbs,  for  the  whole  of  this  peculiar 
isthmus  was  controlled  by  artillery  stationed 
on  Serbian  soil,  while  the  island  of  Podgorichka- 
Ada  on  the  west  and  that  opposite  Skela  on 
the  east  formed  additional  bases  from  which 
invasion  could  be  effected  with  ease  and  in 
practical  security-. 

The  decision  which  had  been  taken  by  Head- 
quarters was  kept  secret  from  all  save  the 
Divisional  Staffs,  and  it  was  not  until  they 
arrived  near  the  river  during  the  night  of 
September  5  to  6  that  the  Field  Officers 
were  aware  that  an  offensive  against  Austria 
had  in  reality  been  luidertaken.  The  marches 
to  the  centres  of  concentration  were,  moreover, 
carried  out  during  the  night,  for  it  was  necessary 
to  screen  the  movements  of  the  troops  from  the 
eyes  of  enemy  aeroplanes,  which  unceasingly 
swept  up  and  down  the  river  in  reconnaissance. 
At  1  a.m.  on   vSeptember  6  the  divisions   com- 


menced the  passage  of  the  river  at  their  allotted 
stations  in  barges.  Once  the  advance  guards 
weie  safely  across,  pontoon  trains  were  brought 
up  and  thrown  across  at  Xovoselo,  while  at 
the  islands  the  bridges  were  made  up  of  pontoons 
belonging  to  the  riverside  water  mills  to  which 
reference  has  already  been  made. 

The  curious  detour  made  by  the  Save  had 
offered  the  Serbs  an  ideal  crossing-place,  and, 
strangely  enough,  an  old  watercourse  of  the 
same  river  provided  them  \^  ith  a  natvu^al  bridge- 
head almost  opposite  the  "  Kut."  At  this 
point  there  exists  a  small  wood,  almost  circular 
in  shape,  siu-rounded  by  what  is  now  a  moat. 
At  the  north-west  of  the  moat  lies  the  town  of 
Obrez,  and  the  formation  of  the  whole  section 
suggests  its  having  been  designed  by  Nature 
for  offensive  operations  such  as  those  under 
discussion.  Once  the  Serbian  divisions  were 
safely  across  the  river,  they  undertook  the  task 
of  clearing  the  woodland  within  the  moat  and 
fortifying  it  as  a  bridge-head.  The  opposition 
encountered  was  not  strong — a  matter  of  two 
legiments  of  infantry  and  one  battery  of 
artillery — and  a  vigorous  shelling  of  the  forest 
speedily  drove  most  of  the  defenders  towards 
Obrez.  The  left  of  the  Serbian  1st  Army  then 
steadily  worked  round  on  the  town  itself,  and, 
after  not  more  than  a  score  of  shells  had  been 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE     WAR. 


365 


dropped  into  it,  the  Austrians  scattered  in  a 
nortli-vvesterly  and  north-easterly  direction. 
The  Cavalry  Division  subsequently  arrived 
on  the  scene,  and  the  two  units  then  proceeded 
to  fortify  the  moat  and  to  throw  a  bridge  over 
it.  The  Serbian  right,  working  towards  the 
east  and  north-east,  had  a  rough  fight  with  a 
hostile  regiment  and  two  batteries,  but  suc- 
ceeded in  captiu-ing  the  villages  of  Kupinovo 
and  Progar. 

While  the  chief  offensive  had  thus  gone  well 
for  Serbian  arms,  a  supporting  action  on  the 
extreme  left  at  Mitrovitza  ended  in  bitter 
disaster.  The  division  there  engaged  was 
to  occupy  and  thoroughly  fortify  Mitrovitza 
and  with  it  a  strong  bridge-head,  after  which 
it  was  to  bear  on  the  enemy's  flank  and 
generally  seek  to  relieve  the  pressure  on 
the  army  acting  in  Syrmia.  The  place 
chosen  for  the  passage  of  the  river  in  this 
sector  was  a  Customs  Station  at  Jasenova 
(Jrada,  between  Mitrovitza  and  Jarak.  The 
troops  commenced  their  march  from  Glustzi 
at  midnight  on  September  5,  and  in  the  early 
morning  of  the  next  day  the  head  of  the  column 
arrived  on  the  river  and  inunediately  recon- 
noitred a  suitable  emplacement  for  a  pontoon 
bridge.  Towards  5  a.m.  a  spii'ited  artillery 
and  rifle  fire  was  opened  with  a  view  to  pre- 
paring the  terrain  for  a  crossing,  it  being  under - 
stood  that  in  the  event  of  a  successful  issue  two 


regiments  would  deploy  to  the  left  and  right 
respectively  and  subsequently  entrench  on 
the  line  from  Mangjeloskabara-Shashinshi, 
with  the  object  of  countering  any  enemy 
movement  from  Jarak. 

The  dispatch  of  the  troops  in  barges  com- 
menced at  7  a.m.,  and  was  received  by  a  heav3 
volley  from  the  Austrian  shore.  In  the  first  boat 
5  men  were  killed  and  3  wounded  ;  the  second 
was  riddled  with  bullets  and  speedily  sanl^. 
Orders  were  given  to  the  artillery  to  open  fire 
on  the  enemy's  trenches  with  explosive  shell  ; 
the  passage  by  barges  continued,  and  many 
of  the  men,  chafing  at  the  slowness  of  the 
movement,  threw  themselves  into  the  river 
and  commenced  to  swim  across.  At  7.40  a.m. 
three    barge    loads    had    reached    the    enemy's. 


VOIVODE    (FIELD    MARSHAL)    PUTNIK, 
Chief  of  the  Serbian  (»eneral  Staff. 

(Photofiraphed  specially  for  "  The  Tunes  History  "  after  the  battle  of  SuvoborJ 

Inset:    COLONEL    GIVKO    PAVLOVITGH,    Sub-Chief  of  the   Serbian    General    Staff. 

3ft— 2 


366 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OE    THE    WAP. 


THE    TRANSPORT    OF    SERBIAN    WOUNDED. 


i,"llie  limes"  i'holij^rapi- 


shore,  and  while  awaiting  reinforcements 
three  score  of  the  men  stormed  the  Austrian 
trenches,  inflicting  comparatively  heavy  casual- 
ties in  killed  and  wounded,  and  taking  20 
prisoners.  Thenceforward  events  moved 
quickly,  and  once  the  troops  were  across 
they  engaged  in  combat  with  the  Austrians 
at  Jarak  and  Shashinshi  while  the  engineers 
threw  a  pontoon  bridge  across  the  river. 

The     forward     movement     of     the     Serbian 
forces   seems   now    to   have    been    prosecuted 


l"  The  Times  "  Pholosruph. 

THE    MILITARY    ATTACHES 

ATTACHED    TO    THE    SERBIAN    STAFF. 

Colonel  Fournier  (France),  Lieut. -Colonel  Harrison 

(Great  Britain),  Colonel  Atamonoff  (Russia). 


with  some  lack  of  foresight,  for,  although 
the  bridge  was  not  yet  in  position,  the 
troops  were  pushed  on  until,  at  5  p.m.,  one 
of  the  regiments  was  outside  Shashinshi  with 
both  its  flanks  exposed  to  hostile  attack.  At 
this  juncture  what  might  have  been  foreseen 
happened,  and  the  Austrians,  having  received 
important  reinforcements  at  Mitrovitza  and 
Jarak,  delivered  a  simultaneous  attack  on  both 
flanks  of  the  regiment.  That  a  considerable 
body  of  the  Serbs  were  able  to  extricate  them- 
selves from  their  hopeless  position  and  get  back 
to  the  river  reflects  the  greatest  credit  upon  the 
men.  They  reached  the  Save  after  two  hours  of 
stubborn  fighting,  carrying  with  them  a  mass 
of  wounded,  to  find  the  bridge  near  com- 
pletion, the  pontoons  being  already  in  position 
and  all  but  the  last  20  yards  of  the  -400  yards 
span  planked.  A  critical  situation  now  speedily 
developed  for  the  Serbs.  On  the  one  side  was 
a  regunent  with  half  its  effectives  out  of  action 
and  the  other  half  subjected  to  a  miu-derous 
fire  from  an  enemy  in  overwhehning  force ; 
on  the  other  a  battalion  of  reserves  seeking  to 
cross  to  the  support  of  their  comrades.  I  Jet  ween 
the  two  lay  the  still  unfinished  pontoon  bridge. 
The  better  to  ensure  the  arrival  of  reinforce- 
ments before  the  wounded  could  rush  the 
passage,  it  was  decided  to  send  the  pioneers 
immediately  in  advance  of  the  reserves,  and 
by  this  means  assure  to  them  the  first  crossing  ; 
but  before  this  intention  could  be  put  into  prac- 
tice the  wounded  flvmg  themselves  into  the 
empty  pontoons,  wliich,  still  insecurely  fixed, 
parted  their  moorings  and  drifted  with  their 
cargo  of  bleeding  warriors  down  the  stream. 
Moreover,  the  boats  were  old  and  leaking,  and 


THE     TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


867 


the  more  heavily  laden  of  them  speedily  sank. 
As  the  last  hope  of  the  gallant  band  floated 
away,  they  stood  with  their  backs  to  the  watery 
wall  facing  their  foe  like  a  hiinted  stag,  their 
curses  mingling  with  the  shouts  of  desperation 
from  the  thwarted  reinforcements  and  with 
the  cries  of  the  drowning  and  the  wounded, 
until  they  rose  above  the  din  of  musketry  and 
machine  gun  fire.  The  Serbians,  however, 
were  game  to  the  end ;  cut  off  alike  from 
supplies  and  anununition,  they  fought  to  the 
last  cartridge,  and  then  surrendered.  All  that 
was  saved  of  the  13th  Regiment  was  the  flag, 
rescued  by  the  Colonel  himself,  and  handed  to 
the  regimental  doctor,  who  swam  the  ri\'er 
with  it  shortly  after  midnight. 

Fortunately,  the  imprudence  which  led  this 
regiment  to  disaster  did  not  characterize  the 
movements  of  che  main  expedition.  The  line 
was  advanced  cautiously,  preceded  always  by 
a  strong  advance  guard  of  cavalry,  and  it  was 
only  after  the  sviccessful  occupation  of  Progar, 
Ashanja,  and  Obrez  that  the  old  bridge- 
head round  the  moat  was  discarded  and  a  new 
and  more  extended  ring  of  earthworks  con- 
structed around  the  villages  already  named,  with 
its  western  corner  at  Podgoritchka-Ada.  Thus 
the  three  Serbian  bases  were  thoroughly  pro- 
tected by  a  semicircular  field -fortress  radiating 
from  Kupinovo. 

Having  in  this  manner  assured  his  commimi- 
cations,  General  Boyovitch  advanced  the 
Cavalry  Division   in  fanlike  formation   to   tlie 


i^v 

/iK^^[PHi^H||^^|^^ 

-SB       .^m^0if^ 

■S--**  .,              'Mi»„                            ^^^^^^^^I 

9^M^ 

^^^^^^H 

Bh 

["  1  he  i  lines     h'lwiu^Tuph, 

VOIVODE    (FIELD    MARSHAL)  MISHITCH, 
Commander  of  the  Serbian  1st  Army. 

north  and  west,  the  norsemen  being  closely 
followed  by  one  division  on  the  right — on  the 
left  the  other  division  took  a  north-easterly 
direction.  By  the  evening  of  September  7 
movmted  patrols  had  arrived  on  the  line 
Karlovchitch-Subotishte-Grabovtsi,  and  had 
unmasked  the  enemy  holding  a  front  Detch- 
Mihal  j  evtsi -Bresach-Platichevo. 

The  following  day  the  patrols  in  the  north 
and  west  sectors  arrived  at  JNIihalj evtsi -Sabo- 
tishte-Bresach-Nikintzi,  but  the  forward  move- 


["  The  Timts  "  Photograph. 

SERBIAN    WOMEN    CARRYING    WOUNDED    FROM    THE    FIRING    LINE. 


868 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAIi. 


Scale  of  Miles 


Railways 


Scale  of  Kilometres 


K)        Reads 


MAP    ILLUSTRATING    THE    EXPEDITION    IN    SYRMIA. 


merit  of  the  Infantry  was  arrested  at  Voicliin- 
Marich  Salas-Vitojevchi.  Tliis  perhaps  un- 
necessary discretion  was  in  part  occasioned  by 
the  knowledge  that  the  Avistrians  were  in  force 
at  Detch  and  Surchin,  and  it  was,  therefore, 
considered  inadvisable  to  send  the  left  too  far 
ahead  until  this  opposition  had  been  overcome. 

On  September  9  the  Serbian  right  proceeded 
to  attack  Detch  and  Surchin.  The  former 
village  was  captured  after  a  short  though 
determined  resistance,  but  the  Austrians  suc- 
ceeded in  holding  Surchin,  and  the  advance  was 
thereby  checked  at  Bechmen.  The  following 
day  the  offensive  was  renewed  against  two 
enemy  regiments  -weU  entrenched  at  Surchin, 
and  the  village  was  taken  by  assault  after 
heavy  fighting.  Tliis  task  accomplished,  the 
Serbians  turned  north  and  captured  Dobran- 
ovtsi  with  little  difficulty,  and  the  troops 
stationed  around  Belgrade,  taking  up  their 
role  of  cooperation,  crossed  the  river  and 
advanced  to  Semlin.- 

On  September  11  General  Boyovitch  com- 
menced a  huge  sweeping  movement  over  the 
whole  front,  with  the  object  of  driving  all  the 
enemy  units  westward  on  to  the  Fruslikagora 
mountain — a  strategy  which  would  have  left 
him  in  undisputed  possession  of  the  plain. 
The  two  divisions,  together  with  the  Indepen- 


dent Cavalry,  would  then  have  been  free  to 
advance  against  Frushkagora  itself,  when,  that 
stronghold  once  taken,  they  would  ha\e 
established  a  mastery  of  Syrmia — a  territory 
of  which,  it  is  well  to  note,  the  inhabitants  were 
ahnost  exclusively  of  Serbian  race. 

September  11  saw  the  Serbs  extended  on  a 
line  Hrtkovtsi-Budjanovtsi-Subotislite-^Iihal- 
jevtsi-Voika-Pazovanova,  with  the  Austrians 
entrenched  on  Jarak-Dobrintsi-Popintsi-Golo- 
bintsi-Pazova  Stara.  The  next  morning  their 
left  occupied  Pecliintsi,  and  advanced  north- 
ward to  the  Romer  Canal,  where  they  were 
met  by  heavy  fire,  and  forced  to  dig  themselves 
in.  Farther  west,  however,  a  brilliant  little 
engagement,  in  which  bombs  and  bayonets 
were  freely  used,  resulted  in  the  capture  of  the 
town  of  Jarak. 

At  this  critical  moment  in  the  liistory  of  the 
expedition  the  Austrians  couunenced  their 
second  invasion  across  the  Drina  in  great  force, 
and  the  Serbian  Staff  found  it  necessary  to 
abandon  the  advance  in  Syrmia  and  recall  the 
divisions  there  engaged  to  the  defence  of  the 
homeland.  The  retirement,  effected  behind  a 
screen  thrown  out  by  the  Cavalry,  was  executed 
in  perfect  order,  and  so  obstinate  was  the 
resistance  offered  by  the  rearguards  that  the 
entire  expedition   was   safely  back  across   the 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


«69 


Save  before  the  Austrians  realized  that  their 
territory  had  been  evacuated. 

While  in  Syrmia  the  Serbs  had  been  the  object 
of  enthusiastic  demonstrations  of  welcome  by 
the  population,  and  their  departure  was  the 
signal  for  a  corresponding  degree  of  depression. 
For  these  testimonies  of  affection  the  Syrmians 
paid  dearly  upon  the  rettirn  of  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  Arm}\  In  the  case  of  one  village 
the  punishment  which  a  Hungarian  regiment 
desired  to  inflict  so  greatly  incensed  a  regiment 
of  Croats  that  a  pitched  battle  ensued,  in  which 
rifles,  maxims,  and  even  cannon  were  employed 
by  both  sides,  heavy  casualties  resulting. 

While  the  possibility  of  a  new  Austrian 
offensive  had  been  foreseen,  the  strength  of  the 
hostile  forces  engaged  came  as  a  surprise  to 
the  Serbian  leaders.  As  a  matter  of  fact. 
General  Potiorek  had  been  able  to  draw  upon 
sufficient  reserves  to  reform  his  decimated 
army  corps,  and  was  thus  enaljled  once  again 
to  undertake  an  advance  against  Valievo  and 
the  second  Austrian  invasion  of  Serbia  com- 
menced. 

From  August  25  to  September  7  the  Austrian 
Balkan  Army  had  been  grouped  as  follows  : 

A  Combined  Corps  : — Klenak-Jarak-Bosut. 

The  8th  Corps: — Bosut-Bijeljina. 

The  13th  Corps: — Janja-Kosluk. 

The  15th  Corps: — Kosluk-Zvornik. 

The  16th  Corps  (less  3-4  battalions) 
Zvornik-Liubovia. 

The  3-4  battalions  of  the  16th  Corps,  to- 
gether with  6-10  battalions  of  Landsturm  and 
recruits,  were  before  the  Montenegrins,  and 
one  and  a  half  divisions  held  the  front  Zemlin- 
Weiskirchen. 

For  purposes  of  explanation,  it  will  be  well 
to  divide  the  theatre  of  operations  into  two 
sectors,  of  which  the  town  of  Loznitza  maj  be 
considered  the  dividing  line.  The  Austrian 
attack  developed  in  force  on  September  7, 
when  an  assault  in  force  was  carried  out  on  the 
whole  frontier  from  Liubovia  to  Jarak.  In  the 
northern  sector  fighting  of  a  very  severe  and 
sanguinary  nature  took  place,  and  though  the 
enemy  succeeded  in  forcing  the  line  at  many 
points,  they  were  almost  invariably  driven 
back  across  the  rivers.  In  the  north-eastern 
corner  of  Matchva,  however,  they  succeeded  in 
obtaining  a  foothold  on  a  triangular  strip  of 
swamp  bounded  by  Ravnje-Tolich-Jarak.  They 
were  checked  on  the  line  Ravnje-Tolich, 
where  both  sides  dug  then\selves  in,  and  there 


then  ensued  a  period  of  trench  fighting  dis- 
tinguished by  little  save  a  woeful  loss  of 
human  life,  and  a  continuous  and,  from  the 
(Serbian  point  of  view,  disastrous  expenditure 
of  ammunition. 

The  practical  failure  of  the  Austrian  effort 
to  the  north  of  Loznitza  was  very  largely  due 
to  the  fact  that  the  Serbs  had  there  concen- 
trated a  force  strong  enough  to  cope  with  the 
invaders.  The  sector  which  had  been  weakened 
in  order  to  provide  sufficient  troops  for  the 
expedition  in  Syrmia  was  that  lying  to  the 
south.  There  the  Serbians  were  numerically 
feeble.  They  were  under  the  impression  that  the 
exceedingly  mountainous  nature  of  the  terrain 
was  in  itself  sufficient  guarantee  against  a 
strong  attack  from  that  direction,  and  even 
when  the  new  penetration  commenced  at 
Liubovia  they  failed  to  attach  any  serious 
importance  to  it. 

But  the  Austrians  thought  otherwise. 
Although  their  first  attempt  to  cross  on 
September  8  was  frustrated,  they  came  on 
again  in  augmented  numbers,  and  very  speedily 
caused  a  general  Serbian  retirement  to  the  line 
of  hills  Guchevo-Boranja-Jagodnia-Sokolska 
planina-Proslop-Rozani,  where  our  Allies  dug 


"CROWDED    OUT." 

A  wounded    and    fever-stricken  Serbian  soldier  for 

whom  there  was  no  room  in  the  hospitals. 


370 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


themselves      in      and      awaited      a      renewed 
attack. 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  up  to  this  time  the 
paramount  importance  of  certain  summits  of 
the  Guchevo-Boranja-Jagodnia  ranges  does  not 
appear  to  have  been  adequately  appreciated  by 
either  side.  The  heights  of  Guchevo — to  take 
a  particular  instance — absolutely  control  the 
Jadar  plain  as  far  eastwards  as  Jarabitze,  and, 
at  a  later  date,  thousands  of  lives  were  sacrificed 
in  a  struggle  for  predominance  there.  Yet 
the  Austrians  failed  to  fortify  the  position  in 
effecting  their  first  invasion ;  the  Serbians 
ignored  it  after  their  victory,  and  it  was  only 
when  the  second  invasion  had  been  checked 
that  the  Austrians  established  themselves  there 


in  force,  with  the  result  that,  until  their  retire- 
ment some  six  weeks  later,  the  Serbs  kept 
nearly  an  entire  divLsion  engaged  in  a  con- 
tinuous and  sanguinary  effort  to  drive  them 
from  it. 

Meantime,  the  fight  in  what  may  best  be 
referred  to  as  the  Exupaoj  theatre  raged 
with  ever-rncreasing  intensity.  The  SerJjians 
succeeded  in  holding  the  crest  of  Kostafinik — - 
a  position  of  great  strategical  importance — but 
farther  south  they  were  steadily  driven  back 
by  superior  enemy  forces  and,  by  September  11, 
the  Austrians  held  all  the  land  west  and  south 
of  the  line  Shanatz  (835)-Sokolska  planina- 
Petska. 

At  tliis  critical  period  one  of  the  divisions 
wliich  had  been  operating  in  Syrmia  arrived  on 
the  scene,  and  the  combined  troops  were  at  once 
ordered  to  undertake  an  immediate  offensive 
against  the  Sokolska  planina,  all  the  summits 
of  which  (Ravno  brdo-Kuline-706-Yasenovatz- 
Melatina-Yasharev  breg-Petkovo  brdo-Goritza) 
were  then  in  hostile  occupation. 

The  mountainous  and  thickly-wooded  nature 
of  the  country  rendered  military  action  exceed- 
ingly difficult,  and  progress  was  at  first  very 
slow.     Little   by    httle,   however,   the   Serbian 


["The  Times"  Phologrtphs. 

A    SERBIAN    REGIMENTAL    HEADQUARTERS    DURING    BATTLE. 
Inset:    GENERAL    YOURASHITGH    STURM,    Commander   of  the    Serbian    3rd    Army. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


371 


advanced  parties,  adopting  much  the  same 
tactics  all  along  the  line,  crept  steadily  uj)  in 
open  formation  under  a  heavy  rifle  and  artillery 
fire,  and  then,  throwing  up  temporary  cover, 
they   awaited  the   arrival   of  the  main  forces. 

Once  these  came  up,  the  order  to  charge  was 
given,  and  a  rush  made  for  the  positions.  The 
effect  upon  the  Austrians  was  original,  if  not 
entirely  lonsuspected,  for  they  had  previously 
advanced  before  a  stubborn  but  retreating 
adversary.  Now,  while  many  turned  and 
fled,  despite  the  fact  that  their  own  artillery 
was  turned  against  them,  the  rest  stood  fast. 
Fierce  hand-to-hand  fighting  then  ensued,  but 
the  Serbs  were  not  to  be  denied,  and  they 
succeeded  in  securing  possession  of  all  the 
heights.  They  found  the  Austrian  trenches 
choked  with  dead  and  wounded,  the  survivors 
having  taken  hurried  flight  in  the  direction  of 
the  Drina.  So  complete  was  the  defeat  that 
the  Serbs  were  soon  able  to  arrive  on  the 
line  Shanatz-Melenkov  Kamen-Brankovatz- 
Obednik  -  Velesh  -  Karacliitza  -  Tchermanovitza 
Gai  Brdjanska  Glavitza,  with  cavalry  patrols 
extending  to  the  Drina  at  Liubovia. 

The  attention  of  both  armies  now  centred 
around  the  commanding  position  of  Matchko 
Kamen  (literally   "the  cat's  leg"),  a  position 


which,  by  reason  of  the  terrific  struggles  which 
followed  for  its  possession — it  was  taken  and 
retaken  no  fewer  than  eight  times — and  the 
appalling  losses  there  occasioned,  will  figure 
large  in  Serbian  military  history. 

The  sole  aim  of  General  Putnik's  subsequent 
strategy  was  to  drive  the  invader  out  of  Serbian 
territory.  With  the  forces  at  his  disposal  he 
was  unable  to  play  for  any  startling  "  coup," 
and  he  accordingly  planned  a  wide  sweeping 
movement  in  order  to  push  the  Austrians  north- 
ward on  to  the  hills,  thus  rendering  their  military 
position  precarious,  and  force  them  over  the 
border.  The  general  idea  was,  therefore,  to 
storm     Matchko     Kamen,     and     subsequently 


.P^- 


1"  The  Tinu-s  "  I'liotographs. 

THE    OFFICERS    OF    THE    1st    BRIGADE    OF    THE    SERBIAN    INDEPENDENT 

CAVALRY    DIVISION. 
Inset  :   VOIVODE   (FIELD    MARSHAL)   STEPANOVITCH,   Commander  of  the  Serbian  2nd  Army. 


372 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


MAP    ILLUSTRATING    THE    SECOND    AUSTRIAN    INVASION    OF    SERBIA. 


advance  and  occupy  a  line  of  crests — Kriva 
Jela-Tsrni  vrh  Debelo  Osoye -Ugivalishte- 
Charochichi  -  Polyana  -  Osmanovo  brdo.  This 
manoeuvre,  as  will  be  observed  on  reference  to 
the  accompanying  map,  would  have  completed 
the  chain  of  heights  which  commence  with 
Guchevo  on  the  north,  and  would  have  given 
the  Serbs  a  frontier  which  they  could  have  held 
with  a  minimum  expenditure  of  men  and 
ammunition. 

Before  this  programme  could  be  carried  to 
its  conclusion,  however,  both  sides  were  worn 
out  by  the  struggle  on  Matchko  Kamen  and 
other  points  of  vantage.  The  Austrians  not 
only  showed  no  inclination  to  renew  the 
offensive  over  such  difticult  ground,  but  were 
doubtless  disconcerted  by  the  progress  of  _the 
Uzitsha  Array,  which  had  penetrated  a  con- 
siderable distance  into  Bosnia.  The  Serbs, 
for  their  part,  were  equally  content  to  settle 
down  and  safeguard  the  terrain  which  they 
had  gained,  for,  if  the  operations  under  dis- 
cussion lacked  the  incident  and  display  wliich 


characterized  the  first  and  third  invasions, 
they  were  in  many  respects  the  most  desperate 
and  sanguinary  of  the  whole  campaign.  The 
losses  incurred  by  both  sides  were,  in  comparison 
with  the  forces  engaged,  truly  enormous,  and  a 
conservative  estimate  of  the  Serbian  casualties 
in  lulled,  wounded,  and  prisoners  put  them  at 
well  over  30,000  men  hors  de  combat. 

Following  the  repulse  of  the  second  invasion 
of  Serbia  by  the  Austro-Hungarian  Army 
there  set  in  a  stage  of  siege  warfare,  closely 
resembling  in  its  principal  aspects  the  periods 
of  fighting,  at  tiiiies  uneventful  and  at  times 
desperate,  which  filled  in  the  intervals  between 
the  great  battles  in  eastern  and  western  Europe. 
Both  sides  dug  themselves  in  on  positions 
wliich  they  persistently  fortified  and  rendered 
increasingly  impervious  to  attack,  and  con- 
structed line  upon  line  of  trenches  from  which 
a  maze  of  communications  led  up  to  the  actual 
front. 

Throughout  the  whole  of  the  period 
between  tlie  second   and  third  invasions,   the 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


373 


Austrians,  persistently  endeavoured  to  break 
their  \\ay  through  in  one  or  other  of  the  sectors 
of  the  hne  dividing  the  two  forces.  They  had, 
aa  will  be  remembered,  retained  possession 
of  only  two  small  triangular  tracts  of  Serbian 
territory.  To  the  north  of  Matchva  they  held 
a  tract  of  marshy  plain — Ravnje-Tolich- Jarak — 
while  farther  south  their  conquest  had  been 
limited  to  a  section  of  sparsely  populated 
moimtain  land  roughly  encompassed  within 
a  line — Smrdan-Taminovich-Zvornik.  On  the 
credit  side  the  Serbs  could  point  to  the  fact 
that  their  Uzitsha  Army  had  advanced  into 
Bosnia  as  far  as  Vlasenitza.  It  would  appear 
that  the  Austrian  command  had  decided  that 
in  view  of  the  fierce  resistance  which  the  Serbs 
had  offered  in  the  Krupani  theatre  little 
success  could  attend  a  renewal  of  offensive 
operations  in  that  direction,  and  they  accord- 
ingly strongly  entrenched  themselves,  and 
settled  down  to  hold  what  they  already  pos- 
sessed. Farther  north,  however,  they  had 
at  length  come  to  appreciate  the  immense 
strategical  importance  of  the  Guchevo  moun- 
tains. At  the  close  of  the  operations  which  are 
referred  to  as  the  second  invasion,  these  moun- 
tains remained  in  the  joint  possession  of  the 
two  armies,  and  there  accordingly  set  in  a  per- 
petual and  sanguinary  struggle  for  supremacy. 
At  some  points  the  rival  forces  were  separated 
only  by  a  few  yards  of  hilltop,  while  at  others 
nearly  a  mile  of  neutral  ground  lay  between  the 
trenches.     All   the   arts   of  siege  warfare   were 


employed  by  one  side  or  the  other  in  the 
constant  combats.,  .which  took  place,  but  the 
Serbian  engineers  were  not  slow  to  demonstrate 
their  superior  initiative,  as  was  evidenced  just 
before  the  Serbian  retreat,  when  they  success- 
fully mined  over  100  yards  of  Austrian  trench 
and  blew  250  of  its  defenders  high  into  the  air. 
This  was  part  of  a  last  attempt  to  conquer 
the  crests,  and  it  was  a  tragic  commentary 
upon  the  paucity  of  ammunition  from  whicli 
the  Serbs  suffered  that  the  whole  manoeuvre 
resulted  in  no  definite  advantage  for  no  other 
reason  than  that  the  Serbian  commander  had 
been  obliged  to  fix  definitely  the  mmiber  of 
rounds  which  could  be  fired  from  his  cannon, 
and  to  cease  the  offensive  when  the  apportioned 
quantity  had  been  exhausted. 

Although  the  Serbians  repeatedly  demon- 
strated their  superiority  over  the  enemy,  they 
were  always  held  in  check  by  the  Austrian 
siege  guns,  which  controlled  the  mountain 
from  the  security  of  the  left  bank  of  the  Drina 
river,  and  though  the  valleys  of  Guchevo  were 
red  with  the  blood  of  thousands  of  victims  of 
both  armies,  the  close  of  the  operations  found 
the  two  forces  in  the  same  position  as  they  had 
occupied  during  the  second  invasion. 

A  little  farther  north  along  the  Urina 
frontier  the  Austrians  had  a  footing  in 
Serbian  territory  at  Kuriachista,  but  were 
otherwise  confined  to  the  left  banlc  mitil  the 
triangular  tract  which  represented  their  con- 
quest of  Matchva  in  the  north-east  was  reached. 


SERBIAN    SOLDIER    LYING    AMIDST    THE    WRECKAGE    OF    TRANSPORT    CONVOY 

30— a 


374 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


A    YOUTHFUL    SNIPER. 

While  they  kept  up  a  continuous  bombardnient 
of  the  Serbian  lines  between  Kuriachista  and 
Paraslinitza  andRatcha,  it  was  along  the  line  from 
Paraslinitza  to  Shabatz  that  they  subsequently 
directed  their  chief  attempt  to  progress  south- 
wards. In  adopting  these  tactics  they  were 
doubtless  occupied  by  two  great  considerations, 
the  first  of  which  was  that  over  this  line  very 
potent  assistance  could  be  rendered  them  from 
river  monitors,  and  the  second  was  that  the 
Serbian  territory  which  they  held  was  very 
low -lying,  with  the  result  that  their  trenches 
speedily  became  waterlogged  and  untenable. 
Experience  had,  moreover,  taught  them  that, 
despite  the  resiolt  of  the  battle  of  the  Jadar, 
the  Serbians  were  more  vulnerable  over  level 
ground,  and  they  rightly  assumed  that  they 
would  find  it  less  difficult  to  register  progress 
across  the  plains  of  Matchva  than  over  the 
broken  and  mountainous  territory  farther 
south. 

In  view  of  the  preponderance  in  numbers 
and  weight  of  metal  which  the  Austrians 
possessed,  and  their  own  acknowledged  shortage 
of  gun  ammunition,  it  is  questionable  whether 
the  Serbian  Staff  would  not  have  been  well 
advised  had  they  decided  completely  to 
abandon  Shabatz  and  the  Matchva  plain  and 
retire    at    once    to    the    foothills    of    the    Tzer 


Mountains  and  the  watershed  of  the  Dobrava 
river.  That  they  did  not  do  so  was  due  to  the 
massacres  committed  and  the  devastation 
caused  by  the  Austrians  during  the  first 
invasion.  Tliis  outburst  of  barbarism  came  as  a 
complete  surprise  to  all  sections  of  the  Serbian 
people.  They  had  been  reared  in  no  ultra- 
squeamLsh  school.  Yet  in  1914  even  officers 
left  their  families  in  frontier  towns  without 
undue  concern,  basing  their  misplaced  optimism 
on  a  belief  that  they  were,  on  this  occasion, 
warring  against  a  civilized  monarchy  whose 
consideration  for  non-combatants  would  be 
second  only  to  their  valour  upon  the  battlefield. 
How  terribly  they  erred  will  be  shovvTi  later. 

A  concentration  on  what  may  be  designated 
the  strategical  frontier  would,  moreover,  have 
delivered  up  the  rich  and  fertUe  Matchva 
district  to  the  mercy  of  Austrian  marauders, 
and  General  Putruk,  therefore,  yielded  to 
sentimental  and  political  influence  and  de- 
ployed his  divisions  in  a  manner  which,  as 
subsequent  developments  were  so  soon  to 
demonstrate,  was  tactically  unsoxmd. 

Shortly  before  their  withdrawal  from  Matchva 
the  Serbians  gained  a  success  by  the  sinking 
of  one  of  the  largest  of  the  Austrian  river 
monitors.  Five  of  these  craft  had  been  annoy- 
ing and  hampering  their  military  operations 
tliroughout  the  campaign.  Night  after  night 
they  perambulated  the  Save,  disclosing  the 
Serb  positions  with  their  searchhghts,  and 
pounding  slirapnel  into  distant  trenches  and 
pompoms  into  those  on  the  water's  edge. 
Serbian  shell  only  glanced  off  their  heavily 
armoured  and  rounded  hulls,  and  previous 
attempts  to  mine  the  river  had  proved  aggra- 
vatingly  inefficient.  But  on  the  night  of 
October  22  one  of  a  pair  of  monitors  which 
had  been  promenading  the  river  with  impunity 
struck  a  mine,  and  sank  before  she  could  be 
steered  to  the  Austrian  shore. 

After  nearly  six  weeks  of  stubborn  resistance 
to  the  Austrian  attempts  to  break  across  the 
Drina,  and  following  a  series  of  bloody  struggles 
for  supremacy  on  Guchevo,  the  Serbs  were  at 
length  faced  with  the  necessity  of  retreat 
Various  causes  contributed  to  this  enforced 
decision  to  withdraw  from  the  frontiers.  With 
the  coming  of  winter  the  trenches  along  the 
river  side  and  on  the  waterlogged  plain  of 
Matchva  became  almost  untenable  ;  the 
Austrian  attacks  increased  in  intensity  ;  the 
preponderance    in     numbers     and    weight     of 


THE    TIME^    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAB. 


375 


metal  possessed  by  the  enemy  grew  almost 
daily  ;  the  Serbian  stocks  of  gun  .ammmiition 
fell  lower  and  lower  ;  and  the  men  showed 
evidence  of  mental  and  physical  fatigue  due 
to  their  constant  vigil  in  the  trenches.  The 
Serbian  soldiers  were  subjected  to  all  the 
drawbacks  of  trench  warfare  at  its  ^^•orst 
but  without  the  respite  which  it  had  been 
found  possible  to  accord  on  other  frontiers. 
So  extended  was  the  Serbian  line  in  pro- 
portion to  the  strength  of  the  army  that 
the  troops  had,  perforce,  to  remain  day  and 
night  without  relief  and  often  without  repose 
in  the  sector  of  muddy  earthworks  which  had 
been  allotted  to  them.  The  nerve-racking 
strain  thus  imposed  became  almost  insupport- 
able. The  special  correspondent  of  The  Times 
reported  that  he  had  seen  several  soldiers  who 
had  gone  mad  under  the  weight  of  it,  and  that 
these  were  but  examples  of  the  nervous  tension 
from  which  the  rest  of  the  army  was  suffering. 

When,  therefore,  the  dictates  of  military 
strategy  were  allowed  to  supersede  pohtical 
considerations,  and  the  order  was  given  to 
retire  the  troops  in  Matchva  to  the  foothills  of 
the  Tzer  mountains  and  the  summits  on  the 
right  bank  of  the  Dobrava  river,  the  retreat 
acted  upon  an  enfeebled  nervous  system,  and 
the  moral  of  the  army  gave  way. 

The  withdrawal  had  been  too  long  delayed, 
with  the  consequence  that  the  command  of  the 
Tzer  mountains  was  lost,  and  a  retirement  from 
Guchevo,  and,  in  fact,  along  the  whole  line 
became  necessary.  Thus  encouraged,  the 
Austrians  swarmed  over  the  frontier  from 
Shabatz  to  Liubovia.  The  Serbians  fought  a 
series  of  rearguard  actions,  but  their  enemy, 
converging  upon  Valievo  in  overwhelming 
force,  speedily  rendered  that  stronghold  unten- 
able, and  the  headquarters  staff  precipitately 
evacuated  it  on  November  11  and  drew  back 
on  Ivragujevatz. 

Valievo  was  a  town  of  considerable 
strategical  importance.  The  centre  of  a  series 
of  routes  which  led  to  it  from  Shabatz  and  the 
Drina  river  and  from  it  to  Obrenovatz,  Belgrade, 
and  Kragujevatz,  it  was  also  the  railliead  of  a 
light  railway  which  joins  up  with  the  European 
line  at  Miadenovatz  and  of  another  which  finds 
its  northern  terminus  at  Obrenovatz.  Its 
capture  was,  therefore,  the  first  stage  in  the 
progress  towards  Kragujevatz,  Nish,  and 
Constantinople,  but,  in  view  of  the  ease  with 
which  it  had  been  taken,  the  jubilations  wliich 
followed  at  \'ienna  were  hardly  justilied,   ur.d 


the  high  decoration  conferred  on  the  Austrian 
Commander-in-Chief,  General  Potiorek,  was 
at  least  premature.  Even  the  ill-fated  "  puni- 
tive "  expedition  of  August  and  the  expen- 
sive second  invasion  hi  September  had 
apparently  failed  to  convince  the  Austrians 
of  the  seriousness  of  the  task  which  they  had 
undertaken,  and  they  appear  also  to  have 
failed  to  realize  both  the  difficulties  which  lay 
before  them  in  the  way  of  a  veteran  army 
fighting  for  its  very  existence  in  its  own  lair, 
and  the  enormous  obstacles  presented  by  the 
question  of  transport  over  the  switchback 
highways  of  levelled  mud  which  serve  for 
roads  in  central  Serbia.  The  score  of  cannon 
which  the  Serbs  were  compelled  to  leave 
behind  for  tliis  latter  reason  were  hailed  as 
evidence  of  hardly  fought  and  dearly-wun 
battles  ;  the  outposts  which  were  captiu-ed  and 
the  fainthearted  who  surrendered  were  accepted 
as  signs  of  a  complete  demoralization  which 
had  not  yet  set  in. 

If,  however,  the  Austrian  success  served 
only  to  depress  and  not  to  demoralize  the 
Serbs,  it  had  a  most  timely  effect  upon  their 
own  soldiers.  In  the  case  of  this  army  so 
lacking  in  homogeneity,  so  devoid  of  all  national 
patriotism,  and  botmd  together  only  by  the 
chains  of  discipline,  victory  was  a  great  essential. 


PRINCE    PAUL    OF    SERBIA    and 
SIR    THOMAS  LIPTON    AT    BELGRADE. 


376 


THE     TIMES    HISTOBY    OF     THE    TIM/?. 


SERBIAN    ARTILLERY    ENTRAINING    FOR    THE    FRONT. 


To  those  of  its  members  who  had  but  Httle 
interest  in  the  cause  for  wliich  they  were 
fighting,  it  supphed  an  inspiration  which  had 
previously  been  non-existent. 

The  Serbs,  as  we  have  already  suggested, 
regarded  their  enforced  retreat  as  unfortunate, 
but  it  was  bj^  no  means  considered  to  be 
serious.  They  had  not  yet  been  driven  back 
on  to  the  line  where  they  had  originally  in- 
tended to  hold  the  Austrians.  Durmg  the 
days  which  intervened  between  the  completion 
of  the  concentration  and  the  first  Austrian 
invasion  of  August  12,  what  are  referred  to  as 
the  Kolubara  and  Lyg  positions  were  strongly 
entrenched,  and,  before  the  actual  capitula- 
tion of  Valievo,  the  General  Staft'  had  decided 
that  no  serious  attempt  would  be  made  to  staj- 
the  progress  of  the  enemy  vmtil  he  reached  that 
line  of  fortifications.  , 

In  itself  the  Kolubara  river  presented  no 
formidable  obstacle  to  an  advancing  army. 
It  is  neither  very  wide  nor  very  deep,  but  its 
approaches  are  sometimes  devoid  of  cover,  and 
on  other  occasions  are  commanded  by  formid- 
able mountain  heights,  with  the  result  that  in 
the  hands  of  a  determined  defence  it  should 
prove  difficult  to  negotiate.  A  little  south- 
west of  Lazarevatz  the  line  of  defence  left  the 
Kolubara,  followed  the  course  of  the  Lyg  river. 


and  entered  country  of  an  exceedingly  rugged 
natiu"e.     From  the  som-ce  of  the  Lyg  the  Serbs 
had    fortified    the    Jeljak    and    Maljen    ranges 
\\hich    control    various    routes    converging    on 
Kragujevatz,     and,     proceeding    in     a    south- 
\vesterly  direction,  they  threw  up  earthworks 
on  the  Bukovi,  Varda,  Jelova,  Bukovic,  Milo- 
shevatz  and  Leska-Gore  ranges,  which  barred 
an  advance  towards  the  Western  Morava  valley. 
It  was  upon  these  positions,  therefore,  that 
the  Serbs  elected  that  the  great  battle  should 
be   fought    out.     At    Obrenovatz    they   had    a 
strong  brigade  known  as  the  "  Detaclunent  of 
Obrenovatz."     Farther   south,     at     Konatiche 
on  the  Kolubara  river,  the  Independent  Cavalry 
Division  formed  a  liaison  with  the  2nd  Anny, 
which  held  Volujak-Lazarevatz-Cooka  and  the 
contoiu^    ol    the   ridge   to   the   left.     Tiie    3rd 
-Ai-my    occupied    the    right    bank    of    the    Lyg 
liver    from    Barzilovitza    to    Ivanovchi.     The 
1st    Army    took    up    a   strong   line — Gukoslii- 
Mednik-Batchinova-Ruda,        and      south-west 
along  the  Jeljak  ridge  to  Maljen.     Finally,  the 
"  Army   of  Uzitsha "    was  withdrawn   from   a 
meritorious   penetration  into   Bosnia   in   order 
to  protect  the  base  of  Uzitsha  and  the  valley 
of  the  Western  INIorava  by  entrenching  itself 
strongly  from  a  point  south-west  of  Yasenovatz 
through  Vk.     Prishedo  along  the  Jelova  crests. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


377 


following  which  it  stretched  across  the  road 
and  joined  the  tors  of  the  Leska-Gora  to  Shanatz. 
The  whole  line  was  naturally  formidable,  an 
excellent  field  of  view  was  everywhere  obtain- 
able, and  sufficient  time  had  been  available 
for  its  adequate  fortification.  Even  admitting 
a  shortage  of  gun  ammunition,  therefore,  tlie 
confidence  of  the  Serbian  Staff  appeared  to  be 
justified  by  the  circumstances,  although  it 
might  \\'ith  reason  iiave  been  suggested  that 
General  Putnik  was  endeavouring  to  hold 
a  very  extended  front  with  the  comparatively 
small  forces  at  his  disposal. 

The  Austrians  displayed  no  ixndue  haste 
in  their  advance.  Despite  the  feeble  opposition 
offered  by  the  Serbian  rearguards  wliich  had 
been  left  behind  to  protect  the  retirement, 
it  took  thein  nearly  six  weeks  to  arrive  on  the 
ground  selected  by  their  adversary,  and  it  may 
be  assumed  that  during  that  time  they  were 
able  to  adapt  themselves  to  the  conditions  of 
warfare  dictated  by  the  peculiarities  of  the 
country  over  which  they  were  operating. 
Mid-November  had  arrived  before  they  got 
into  touch  with  the  inain  body  of  the  Serbian 
Army.  They  had  almost  divested  Bosnia  of 
its  garrisons  and  had  brought  up  an  additional 
corps  from  the  Italian  frontier,  so  that  they 
went  into  action  with  five  Army  Corps  (roughly 


250  battalions  of  infantry,  in  addition  to 
cavalry,  artillery  and  corps  troops). 

Information  that  ammunition  was  en  route 
now  exerted  a  cheering  influence  upon  the 
Serbian  Staff ;  but  the  men,  unaccustomed 
to  retreat,  were  further  disheartened  by  half 
a  million  of  refugees  who  blocked*  the  roads 
as  they  fled  in  terror  before  the  oncoming 
Austrian  hosts  and  recounted  exaggerated 
stories  of  the  enemy's  preponderance  to  their 
comrades-in-arms.  The  sight  of  the  streams  of 
refugees  as  they  filled  every  nook  and  corner  of 
the  towns  or  stood  with  their  oxen  and  wagons, 
knowing  not  whether  to  tui'n  to  the  left  or 
right,  spread  panic  among  the  civiUan  popula- 
tion, and  the  inhabitants  of  Lazarevatz, 
Milanovatz,  Kragujevatz  and  other  of  the 
more  populous  centres  deserted  their  homes  and 
added  their  thousands  to  the  flotsam  of  Nish. 

The  Austrian  general  attack  on  the  Serbian 
positions  commenced  on  tlie  morning  of 
November  1 5.  It  developed  principally  against 
the  2nd  Army  south  of  Lazarevatz  and  the 
Uzitsha  Army  in  the  direction  of  Kosjerichi, 
but  during  five  days  the  offensive  was  success- 
fully repulsed,  and  the  defenders  were  able  not 
only  to  inflict  considerable  loss  upon  their 
enemy,  but  to  captui'e  a  fair  nmnber  of  prisoners. 
The  intention  to  seize  Lazarevatz  and  push  on 


ONE    OF    THE 


TWO    FRENCH    14cm.    NAVAL    GUNS 
AUSTRIANS    AT    BELGRADE. 


I"  Jilt  Times"  Plu)loiiral>h 

DESTROYED    BY    THE 


J578 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


along  the  Valievo-Mladenovatz  railway  was 
meritorious  in  that  it  would  have  both  cut  off 
the  main  Serbian  Army  from  the  forces  around 
Belgrade  and  permitted  an  easy  outflanking 
movement  against  Kragujevatz,  For  the  Serbs 
it  was  a  very  necessary  stronghold  on  which 
to  pivot  their  operations  north  and  south, 
and  it  was  probably  for  that  reason  that  its 
defence  was  confided  to  Voivode  Stepanovitch 
and  the  division>s  whose  efforts  had  counted 
for  most  in  the  great  victory  on  the  Jadar 
river. 


In  order  to  render  the  account  of  the  subse- 
quent operations  more  intelligible  to  the  reader, 
it  will  be  advisable  to  divide  the  theatre  of 
war  into  two  sectors,  and  to  treat  the  operations 
against  Kragujevatz  and  Belgrade  as  separate 
and  distinct  actions,  although,  as  a  matter  of 
actual  fact,  each  exerted  a  considerable  influence 
upon  the  other.  For  purposes  of  reference  to 
the  advance  again.st  Kragujevatz  the  2nd  Army 
at  Lazarevatz  may  be  considered  the  right  wing 
of  the  Serbian  line,  the  3rd  Army  its  right 
centre,  the  1st  Army  its  centre,  and  the  Uzitsha 
-Army  its  left. 

On  November  20  a  strong  enemy  force 
advanced  and  occupied  Milovatz  m  close  touch 
with  the  right  flank  of  the  1st  Army,  while  a 
further  colimin  made  contact  Mith  its  centre 
at  Ruda  and  seized  the  important  sununit  of 
Strazhara.  The  next  day  this  manoeuvre 
developed  into  a  determined  onslaught  on  the 
Serb  positions.  The  men  held  their  groimd 
for  some  time  with  undaunted  courage,  but 
towards  evening  the  resistance  in  the  centre 
broke  down,  and  the  army  was  beaten  back 
with  heavy  losses  in  men  and  guns  on  to  the 
line  Babina  Glava-Rajac.  On  the  right,  two 
attacks  on  the  Lazarevatz  positions  were 
successfully  beaten  ofi.  The  3rd  Army  (Bar- 
zilovitza-Ivanovchi)  held  its  ground,  and 
sanguinary  fighting  between  the  Uzitsha  Army 
and  the  Austrian  16th  Corps  closed  without 
advantage  to  either  side. 


I"  Tlw  Timei  "Photographs. 

SERBIAN    INFANTRY    MARCHING    INTO    ACTION. 
Inset :   PRIVATE   LEACH,  one  of  a  small  group  of  British  volunteers  serving  with  the  Serbian  Army. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


379 


SERBIAN    ARTILLERY    ON   THE    MARCH. 

The  disastrous  retirement  of  the  1st  Ariny 
from  the  excellent  positions  which  it  had  held 
on  the  Ruda-Mednik-Gukoshi  line  sent  a  wave 
of  depression  over  the  Serbian  ranks.  The 
men  lost  heart,  and  the  high  commands  became 
discouraged,  because  they  well  knew  that  the 
demoralization  could  only  be  stayed  by  the 
timely  arrival  of  ammumtion,  and  they  feared 
that  the  situation,  so  far  from  manifesting 
any  impro\'ement,  might  steadily  worsen  until 
ex^en  renewed  activity  by  the  artillery  might 
prove  ineffective.  Fortiinately,  however,  the 
Austrians  did  not  immediately  follow  up  their 
success,  but  rested  on  the  central  sector  while 
the  mountain  brigades  of  their  16th  Corps 
came  in  from  Vishegrad-Rogatitza  and  Bajina 
Bashta,  and  delivered  an  indecisive  attack  on 
ti:e  Serbian  extreme  left  on  the  line  Varda- 
Vk.  Prishedo  -  Gjakov  -  Bukovik  -  Miloshevatz- 
Gruda. 

On  November  24  the  battle  developed  on 
the  whole  front,  with  such  success  to  the  in- 
vaders that  two  days  later  they  had  stormed 
and  taken  the  heights  of  Cooka  (thus  involving 
the  retirement  of  the  2nd  Army  to  the  line 
Glavitza-Stubitza-Smyrdlykovatz)  and  had 
driven  the  Uzitsha  Army  back  on  to  theGoinja- 
gora  mountains  at  the  head  of  the  Western 
Morava  valley. 

Simultaneously  with  their  general  offensive 
the  Austrian  Stafi  now  inaugurated  a  deter- 
mined effort  to  outflank  the  SerV)ian  extreme 
left.  To  this  end  they  deployed  their  mountain 
brigades  to  excellent  purpose,  and  though  the 
Serbs,  despite  all  the  disabilities  from  which 
they  were  suffering,  fought  gallantly  and  well, 
they  were  compelled  to  retreat,  step  by  stop. 


"  The  Times  "  Plwtograph 

A    SERBIAN    3rd    BAN    SOLDIER 
GUARDING    A    BRIDGE. 


until,  on  November  28,  the  Uzitsha  Army  took 
up  a  strongly  prepared  line  on  Kita-Kablar- 
Markovitza,  all  paramoiuit  heights  of  great 
strategical  importance. 

In  the  rest  of  the  southern  sector  many 
efforts  were  made  to  retrieve  the  situation  ; 
but,  though  the  counter-attacks  were  often 
successful,*  the  defenders  were  unable  to 
maintain  any  advantage,  and,  outnumbered 
and  outweighted,  and  with  an  ever -weakening 
"  moral,"  they  ceded  ridge  after  ridge  until 
the  dominating  Suvobor  mountains  fell  to  their 
elated  enemy. 

■  • 

*  A  counter  attack  on  Salinatz  on  November  27,  for 
exiimple,  resulted  in  the  capture  of  the  position  with 
7  olficers  and  1,580  men  prisoners. 


380 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


Mshe^ad\3  mz^es 


MAP    ILLUSTRATING    THE   THIRD 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


361 


AUSTRIAN    INVASION    OF    SERBIA. 


382 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAB. 


In  the  northern  sector  (Ohrenovatz- 
Lazarevatz)  a  succession  of  hardly  fought 
combats  took  place  on  the  Kolubara  river.  The 
Serbs,  while  in  a  great  numerical  inferiority, 
fought  with  great  stubbornness,  and  though 
an  enemy  division  penetrated  to  Progon  on 
November  24,  it  was  subsequently  rounded  up 
and  driven  back  with  heavy  loss  by  the 
Independent  Cavalry  Division. 

The  cliief  danger,  however,  lay  in  the  south. 
In  that  theatre  the  Austrians  had  scored  an 
imdoubted  success,  for  they  had  not  only 
driven  the  Serbs  back  upon  their  defences  before 
Kragujevatz,  but,  what  was  perhaps  equally 
important,  had  succeeded  in  extending  the 
froijt  until  it  stretched  from  Tchatchak  to 
Belgrade — a  distance  of  nearly  seventy  miles 
from  point  to  point. 

On  November  28  the  Serbs  held  the  line  : 

2nd  Army.  —  Vechani  -  Medvedjak  -  Progo- 
reoclii-Vagan-Summits  428  to  262. 

3rd  Army.  —  Kalanjevchi  -  498  -  across  Tru- 
deljska  river-700  Gotrovitza-Kelja. 

1st  Army.  —  Silopaj  -  Nvikuchani  -  Vmchani- 
Lochevchi-Galich. 

Uzitsha    Army. — Kita-Kablar-Markovitza. 

The  disposition  of  the  Austrian  forces  was  as 
follows  : 

In  the  direction  of  the  Western  Morava 
valley  : 

Four  mountain  brigades  of  the  16th  Corps. 

On  the  road  Valievo-Gn.  Milanovatz  : 

The  rest  of  the  16th  and  the  entire  15th 
Corps. 


Against  Lazarevatz  : 

The  13th  Corps. 

The  8th  and  a  Combined  Corps  were  moving 
eastward  against  the  line  Mladenovatz-l^-l  rade. 

The  Serbian  nation  was  at  this  tii..-  lully 
conscious  of  the  fact  that  its  very  existence 
was  in  jeopardy.  The  well-equipped  armies  of 
the  mighty  neighbour  who  sought  nothing  less 
than  its  annihilation  had  penetrated  far  into 
the  land,  and  to  all  apj)earance  would  soon 
complete  the  destruction  of  the  weary  defending 
force.  On  the  eastern  frontier  bands  of 
irregulars  were  destroying  the  only  route 
by  which  the  needed  ammunition  could 
arrive,  and  there  was  fear  of  the  military 
occupation  of  Serbia's  Macedonian  territory. 
Rmnania  still  held  aloof,  Italy  gave  no  sign 
of  prompt  intervention,  and  Greece,  ready  to 
help,  was  kept  back  by  fear  of  Bulgaria.  It 
seemed  impossible  that  succour  could  arri\e, 
and  the  Serbs,  losing  faith  in  themselves,  lost 
hope.  Yet,  save  among  a  section  of  the 
civilian  population,  there  was  no  panic.  They 
fac<id  the  new  situation  calmly  and  stoically. 
They  were  a  little  nation  fighting  a  great 
Empire ;  they  were  worn  out  by  this  and 
previous  wars  and  short  of  everything,  and, 
perhaps  more  tragic  than  all,  ammunition  that 
had  been  hoped  for  from  richer  Allies  had  been 
delayed  too  long.  Thus  they  felt  that  even 
if  complete  defeat  followed,  it  would  be  no 
disgrace. 

Despite  the  apparent  hopelessness  of  it  all. 
there  remained  deep  down  in  the  heart  of  the 


THE    LETTER    HOME. 


["  Th;  TiiHtS  "  Pkoograph. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


383 


A    BATTLEFIELD    FUNERAL. 


i."  The  Times  "  Photograph. 


Serbian  leaders  a  conviction  that  the  decisive 
battle  had  still  to  be  won.  Through  the 
darkness  of  defeat  there  had  shone  occasional 
gleams  of  victory.  Day  after  day  Colonel 
Pavlovitch,*  the  brilliant  Director  of  Military 
Operations  on  the  General  Staff,  had  analyzed 
the  statements  of  the  captured  Austrians,  and 
from  these,  coupled  with  the  slowness  of  the 
enemy  advance,  ho  deduced  that  serious 
difhculties  of  transport  were  being  encountered, 
and  that  the  demoralization  in  the  ranks  of 
General  Potiorek's  army  \\as  no  less  marked 
than  in  his  own.  Further,  supplies  of  gmi 
ammunition  had  at  last  commenced  to  arrive. 

Thus  the  Serbs  set  about  the  organization 
of  one  last,  bold  bid  for  victory  in  the  shape  of 

*  Colonel  Givko  Pavlovitch  was  bom  in  1871.  The 
son  of  a  Serbian  farm  labourer,  he  early  developed  a 
passion  for  the  army,  but  by  reason  of  the  poverty  of  his 
parents  he  was  unable  to  attach  himself  to  his  chosen 
career  until,  by  his  extraordinary  ability,  he  won  a 
series  of  scholarships.  After  a  period  of  study  in  the 
Military  Academy  at  Belgrade,  he  finished  his  instruction 
at  Berlin,  and  was  then  admitted  to  the  Serbian  General 
Staff.  He  soon  rose  to  the  position  of  Professor  of 
Tactics  at  the  Serbian  Military  School,  and  when  war 
was  declared  with  Turkey,  was  the  obvious  choice  for 
the  position  of  Director  of  Military  Operations.  He 
visited  London  in  the  spring  of  1913  as  military  expert 
attached  to  the  Serbian  Delegation,  and  later  proceeded 
to  Scutari,  where  he  was  in  charge  of  the  joint  Serbo- 
Montenegrin  attack  against  that  town.  During  the 
Bulgarian  War  of  1013  Colonel  Pavlovitch  was  the 
principal  collaborateur  of  General  Piitnik,  and  the  same 
role  was  allocated  to  him  in  the  war  against  Austria. 
Physically,  he  posse-;>es  the  well-developed  phj'siquo  of 
the  average  Serbian,  but  in  personal  appearance  some- 
what resembles  the  Japanese  type.  Ho  has  tremendous 
powers  of  resistance,  and  rarely  loses  his  innate  optimism. 


a  vigorous  coiuiter-offensive.  The  first  and 
obvious  necessity  was  to  shorten  the  enormous 
front  over  which  the  armies  had  previously 
been  extended.  This  manoeuvre  involved  the 
withdrawal  of  the  detachment  of  Obrenovatz 
and  the  Cavalry  Division  from  the  right  bank 
of  the  Kolubara,  and  the  evacuation  of  Bel- 
grade (night  of  November  29-30).  A  redistri- 
bution of  the  Serbian  forces  then  followed,  the 
troops  from  the  Kolubara  occupying  the 
heights  about  Sibnitza  and  the  Detachment  of 
Belgrade  being  placed  astride  the  Belgrade- 
Nish  railway  on  the  summits  of  Varoonitza 
(east)  and  Kosmai  (west).  The  other  armies 
were  grouped  on  the  line  already  indicated, 
meastires  having  been  taken  to  reinforce  the 
centre. 

It  had  also  become  self-evident  that  a  change 
in  the  high  command  of  the  1st  Army  had 
beconie  necessary.  This  unit,  though  composed 
of  divisions  with  a  record  of  distinguished 
service  behind  them,  had  led  the  retreat,  and 
thus  precipitated  the  general  withdrawal.  It 
had  lost  Suvobor,  and,  if  success  was  ever  to 
crown  this  new  offensive,  it  was  considered 
that  that  range  must  first  be  recaptured. 
General  Putnik,  theri'fore,  decided  to  deprive 
the  Staff  of  the  services  of  General  Mishitch, 
his  trusted  lieutenant  through  all  the  three 
wars,  and  to  place  him  at  the  head  of  the  1st 
Army. 

Mishitch  was  a  typical  Serbian  officer. 
Tlic  son  of  a  peasant,  he  had  risen  by  sheer 


384 


THE    TlME>i    HlFiTOBY    OF     THE    WAn. 


"The  Ttiiies"  FlwtOfiraph 

A    FRONTIER    GUARD    OF    3rd    BAN    TROOPS    ON    THE    RIVER    SAVE. 


capacity  to  the  front  rank  of  Serbian  military 
leaders.  A  man  of  simple  and  unobtrusive 
tastes,  with  the  fair  hair  and  blue  eyes  of  the 
pure-blooded  Southern  Slav,  and  a  disposition 
which  bordered  on  self-effacement,  he  possessed 
a  natural  genius  for  command.  The  sub- 
sequent recaptiu-e  of  Suvobor  was  very  largely 
due  to  his  superb  generalship  and  inspiration, 
and  it  was  fitting  that  he  emerged  from  the 
combat  a  Field-Marshal  of  King  Peter's  Army. 

The  men,  if  disheartened  by  the  continued 
withdrawal,  had  nevertheless  in  some  measiu-e 
recovered  from  the  nerve-racking  strain  in  the 
trenches,  and  they  were  now  called  upon  l:)y 
Royal  Proclamation  to  make  one  great  sacrifice 
for  their  country's  sake.  The  aged  King  Peter 
rose  from  a  bed  of  suffering  and  joined  his 
subjects  in  the  firing  line.  The  sale  of  liquor 
was  prohibited.  Finalh',  as  has  already  been 
stated,  artillery  aimnunition  had  at  last  arrived, 
and  guns  that  had  long  been  silent  were  again 
to  belch  forth  that  encouragement  which  tlie 
thunder  of  cannon  alone  can  give. 

The  strategy  of  General  Potiorek  had  now 
become  apparent.  Using  the  moimtain  range 
of  Suvobor  as  a  pivot,  he  strengthened  his 
wings,  and  attempted  to  swing  round  on  the 
north  by  Mladenovatz  and  south  down  the 
Western  Morava  valley.  Had  this  scheme 
been  successfully  executed,  the  enemy  would 
have  been  able  to  round  up  tlie  mass  of  the 


Serbian  Army  together  with  Kragujevatz  and 
its  arsenal,  after  which  the  capture  of  Nish 
(the  temporary  capital)  would  have  followed 
as  a  matter  of  course,  and  the  campaign  in 
Serbia  would  have  been  at  an  end. 

It  was  under  such  conditions,  and  before  the 
invaders  had  been  able  to  develop  their  great 
outflanking  movement,  that  the  order  for  the 
coLUiter-attack  was  given  on  December  2,  and 
the  advance  at  once  began  over  the  whole 
front.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that,  after 
the  somewhat  feeble  resistance  which  they  had 
previously  encountered,  the  brisk  offensive 
took  the  Austrians  completely  by  surprise. 
The  Serbians  pulled  themselves  together  in 
a  manner  which  finds  few  parallels  in  history. 
Mishitch  led  his  1st  Army  against  Suvobor, 
where,  advancing  with  wonderful  elan,  during 
three  days  of  combat,  they  stormed  and  cap- 
tured the  enemy  pivot  and  threw  the  Austrian 
right  and  centre  (the  15th  Corps  and  8  brigades 
of  the  16th  Corps)  into  headlong  flight  along 
the  road  to  Valievo.  Commencing  with  this 
dramatic  success,  the  Serbian  Armies — the 
demoralized  hordes  of  a  few  days  before — 
advanced  with  remarkable  rapidity,  and  did 
tiot  cease  the  pursuit  until  they  had  driven 
the  armed  hosts  of  the  Hapsburgs  back  across 
the  Save  and  Drina. 

Up  to  December  1  the  Austrians  had  slowly 
advanced  towards  the  Serbian  positions,  sure 


THE     TIMES    HISTOEY    OF    THE    WAR, 


385 


that  victory  now  lay  within  their  grasp.  In 
fact,  so  great  and  deeply  founded  was  the  con- 
fidence of  the  enemy  Stafi  that  the  end  was 
within  sight  that  the  most  primitive  require- 
ments of  the  troops  went  unsupplied.  Demands 
for  boots  and  equipment  and  even  for  food 
were  met  by  an  assurance  that  two  or  three 
days  would  see  the  end  of  the  campaign, 
and  that  the  inconvenience  must  be  supported 
until  that  tinae. 

Thus  when  the  1st  Army  commenced  its 
advance  the  Austrians  were  caught  leisurely 
trundling  along  the  roads — not  on  open  country, 
hut  in  valleys  and  dales  commanded  from  the 
heights  above — and  by  the  time  they  could 
recover  from  the  shock  and  extend  their  ranlvs, 
the  Serbs  had  inflicted  enormous  losses  on  them 
and  thrown  the  survivors  into  a  state  of  semi- 
panic.  On  that  day  alone  General  Mishitch 
captured  12  officers,  1,500  men,  5  mountain 
howitzers  and  4  machine  guns,  and  advanced 
his  army  to  the  line  Kostuniche-Teocliin-Gm. 
Branetichi-Vranovicha.  The  Uzitsha  Army 
was  heavily  attacked  on  its  positions  on  both 
sides  of  the  western  Morava,  but  repulsed  the 
enemy  and  took  95  prisoners.  The  3rd  Army 
advanced  more  slowly  towards  Lipet,  taking 
3  officers,  500  men,  and  2  machine  guns.  The 
2nd  Aimy  met  with  considerable  opposition, 
but  after  desperate  fighting  registered  good 
progress  and  captured  a  considerable  number 
of  prisoners. 


In  the  northern  sector  the  Austrians  had 
detached  an  important  force  for  their  triiunphal 
entry  to  Belgrade,  and  reconnoitring  parties,, 
probably  a  fianl<-guard  of  observation,  were- 
observed  in  the  direction  of  Slatina-Sopot- 
Popovitch. 

The  signal  successes  of  the  first  day's  offen- 
sive, coming,  as  they  did,  hard  upon  weeks  of 
discouraging  bulletins,  were  hailed  with  en- 
thusiasm by  the  Serbs.  Yet  their  jubilation 
was  quiet  and  restrained.  They  recognized 
that  their  enemy  had  been  taken  in  more  or 
less  degree  by  surprise,  and  they  did  not  lose 
sight  of  the  fact  that  he  remained  in  possession 
of  mountain  positions  of  great  natural  strength, 
from  many  of  wliich  he  would  have  to  be  driven 
at  the  point  of  the  bayonet.  But  the  soldiers 
had  recovered  their  moral,  and  pressing  onward 
^\  ith  renewed  courage,  they  swept  the  Haps- 
burg  armies  before  them  with  ever-increasing 
rapidity.  Tor  after  tor  was  stormed  and  taken, 
and  headquarters  had  scarce  announced  one 
victory  ere  news  was  received  of  another. 
By  December  5  the  1st  Army  had  recon- 
quered the  dominating  height  (802)  of  the 
Suvobor  range  and  the  summit  of  Rajatz. 
The  3rd  Army  had  overcome  a  vigorous  resis- 
tance and  advanced  to  Vrlaja  during  the  daj% 
and  as  the  result  of  a  night  attack  the  Austrians 
abandoned  Lipet  witli  2,000  prisoners.  The 
2nd  Army  had  pushed  steadily  on  to  Kremen- 
itza   and    Barosnevatz.      The    Uzitsha    Armv 


THE    EVENING    MEAL  OF    THE   3rd    BAN. 


t"  'I  lu  Titms  "  PhtUsruph. 


386 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


SERBIAN    SIEGE    GUN    IN    ACTION. 


continued  to  wage  an  unequal  fight  with  the 
right  wing  of  the  16th  Corps,  but  nevertheless 
succeeded  in  holding  its  own.  Thiis  encouraged, 
it,  too,  took  the  offensive  with  a  night  attack, 
and  the  foUowmg  morning  saw  the  enemy 
in  full  retreat  towards  Zelenibreg. 

There  was  now  little  doubt  that  the  third 
invasion  of  Serbia  would  prove  a  greater 
debacle  than  the  first.  The  three  Army  Corps 
on  the  Austrian  centre  and  right  had  been 
completely  broken,  and  were  retreating  in 
disordered  fiight  towards  Valievo  and  Roga- 
titza,  ceding  thousands  of  prisoners  and 
abandoning  enormous  quantities  of  impedi- 
menta of  war.  On  December  7  the  Uzitsha 
Army  reached  Pozega,  the  1st  Army  quicldy 
overcame  the  last  enemy  resistance  on  the 
summit  of  Maljen,  and  took  the  line  Maljen- 
Ruda-Donia-Toplitza.  The  3rd  Army  pushed 
on  with  great  vigour  and  reached  Milovatz- 
liochnyanovitch-Dudovitza,  making  a  great 
haul  of  guns  and  prisoners. 

Only  the  2nd  Army  failed  to  make  headway, 
for  the  Austrian  command,  doubtless  regarding 
the  situation  on  Suvobor  as  irretrievably 
lost,  attempted  to  create  a  diversion  on  the 
north.  The  8th  and  Combined  Corps  had,  in 
effect,  held  their  ground  more  stubbornly 
than  those  opposed  to  the  Serbian  Ist  and  Srd 


Armies,  and  they  not  only  succeeded  in  check- 
ing the  2nd  Army,  but  somewhat  audaciously 
opened  an  attack  on  the  position  held  by  the 
'"Detachment  of  Belgi'ade "  at  Kosmai  and 
Varoonitza.  The  Serbs  had,  however,  no  occasion 
for  discontent  with  this  day's  operations,  for 
their  booty  included  29  officers,  6,472  men. 
27  field  guns,  1  mountain  gun,  15  gun  carriages. 
56  wagons  of  artillery  armniinition,  and  be- 
tween 500  and  600  transport  wagons.  They 
had  also  decided  the  issue  in  the  south,  and  the 
13th,  15th,  and  16th  Austrian  Army  Corps 
were  flying — ^a  disordered  rabble — before  the 
armies  of  General  Stiirm  (3rd  Army)  and 
General  Mishitch. 

On  December  8  the  Uzitsha  Army  met  with 
considerable  opposition  before  the  town  of 
that  name,  but  the  Serbian  soldiers  were 
not  to  be  denied,  and  the  remnants  of  the 
famous  16th  Austrian  Corps  turned  tail  and 
fled  for  the  frontier.  The  1st  Army,  con- 
tinuing its  triumphal  progress,  recaptvu"ed 
Valievo.  The  3i'd  Army  lilcewise  reached  the 
Kolubara  (at  its  junction  with  the  Lyg),  and, 
deploying  one  division  eastward,  tlireatened 
the  right  flanlv  of  the  Austrians  on  Cooka, 
and  permitted  the  2nd  Army  to  carry  the  posi- 
tion. By  this  success  the  Serbians  drove  in 
a    wedge    and    completely    cut    off    the    tliree 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


387 


fugitive  corps  in  the  south  from  the  two  which 
were  still  manifesting  some  measure  of  martial 
activity  in  the  north. 

The  operations  towards  the  west  and  north- 
west now  resolved  themselves  into  a  race  for 
the  frontier.  There  was  little  fighting,  for 
the  fugitive  Austrians  sou,!.'ht  only  to  put  a 
safe  distance  between  thejQselves  and  their 
pursuers,  and  jettisoned  enortnous  quantities 
of  war  material,  which  littered  the  routes  to 
Banjabashta,  Rogatitza,  Loznitza,  and  Shabatz. 

From  this  stage  railifary  interest  centred 
in  the  operations  against  Belgrade.  On  Decem- 
ber 8  and  9  the  "  Detachment  of  Belgrade  " 
had  been  hard  pressed  on  the  line  Kosmai- 
Varoonitza ;  but  the  completeness  of  the 
Austrian  debacle  in  other  theatres  enabled 
General  Putnik  to  rearrange  his  troops.  He 
therefore  dispatched  the  left  wing  of  the  3rd 
Army  against  Obrenovatz,  attached  the  re- 
mainder of  the  3rd  Army  and  the  Cavalry 
Division  to  the  2nd  Army,  and  placed  this  com- 
bined force,  together  with  the  "  Detachment 
of  Belgrade,"  imder  the  supreme  command  of 
Voivode  Stepanovitch,  the  hero  of  the  fii'st 
battle  on  the  Tzer  Mountains. 

Voivode  Stepanovitch  was  typical  of  the 
peasant  stock  from  which  he  sprang.  Short, 
fat,  and  stvunpy,  he  was  distinguished  by  a 
roimd,  chubby  head,  a  well-lined  ruddy  face. 


and  smiling  blue  eyes  which  radiated  kindli- 
ne.-s.  Towards  his  ofificers  he  maintained 
v4  severe  and  vmcompromising  attitude ;  he 
was  intolerant  of  incapacity  or  idiosyncrasy, 
and  his  morose  temperament  and  preferenct- 
for  his  own  society  rendered  him  at  times 
a  most  difficult  chief.  Yet  towards  his 
soldiers  his  demeanour  was  entirely  different. 
It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  he  loved  them 
as  children,  made  their  comfort  and  well- 
being  his  first  consideration,  and  became,  in 
consequence,  the  idol  of  the  ranlc  and  file. 
In  the  piping  times  of  peace  Stepanovitch 
devoted  much  time  to  quiet  reflection.  Each 
day  he  sauntered  from  his  Belgrade  home  to 
the  most  remote  park  of  the  capital,  and, 
seating  himself  in  a  lonely  spot,  was  wont 
to  study  visions  in  the  azure  space.  If  any 
interloper  arrived  on  the  scene  the  General 
would  glare  at  him  with  undisguised  annoy- 
ance, and  move  off  into  solitude.  So  accus- 
tomed had  the  Belgradians  become  to  this 
habit  of  one  of  their  most  famous  military 
leaders,  that  a  seat  in  the  park  was  known  and 
respected  as  the  Voivode's  own.  The  Geneml 
carried  the  same  dislike  of  intrusion  into  war, 
and  oft-times  declined  conversation  with  his 
Staff  for  hours  on  end,  the  better  to  preserve 
an  uninterrupted  flow  of  thought.  Yet  he 
was  a   great   General.     The   castles   which   he 


[■■  The  Times"  l'lwlji;rnpl . 


AUSTRIAN    PRISONERS    EN    ROUTE    TO    VALIEVO. 


388 


THE    TIMES    HISTUUY    OF    THE    WAR. 


SERBIAN    PEASANT    WOMAN    MINISTER- 
ING    TO    WOUNDED    SOLDIER. 

built  were  strategical  plans  which  had  a  habit 
of  maturing  to  the  discomfort  of  his  enemy, 
and  although  an  exclusively  home-growm  pro- 
duct, he  was  able  to  point  to  a  distinguished 
military  record. 

Wlien,  on  December  10,  Voivode  Stepano- 
vitch  took  up  the  command  of  the  movement 
towards  Belgrade  the  3rd  Army  was  pressing 
onwards  towards  Obrenovatz  ;  the  cavalry 
division  held  the  left  banlc  of  the  river  Bel- 
janitza ;  the  2nd  Army  wero  on  the  line 
Volujak-Sibnitza-Nemenikuchir ;  "The  Detach- 
ment of  Belgrade "  maintained  the  positions 
on  Kosmai-Varoonitza,  and  the  detacliment 
from  Semendria  had  come  up  and  occupied 
Pudarchi.  The  troops  thus  occupied  a  semi- 
circular front  practically  stretching  from  the 
Save  to  the  Danube  rivers. 

The  Austrian  main  positions  stretched  from 
Obrenovatz  up  the  right  bank  of  the  Kolubara 
to  Konatitcho,  and  then  across  to  Grocka 
tlirough  Boran-Boshdarevatz-Vlashko-Lipa- 
Krajkov^o-bara. 

A  general  advance  was  ordered  for  De- 
cember 11,  and,  particular  importance  being 
attached  to  the  control  of  the  railway,  the 
centre  pushed  rapidly  ahead,  and  after  over- 
coming a  desperate  resistance  stormed  and 
captured  the  summit  of  Vlasliko  the  same 
evening,  thereby  securing  control  of  the  rail- 
head at  Ralia,  the  virtual  terminus  of  the  line, 
since  a  tiuincl  a  few  kilometres  north  had  been 
blown  vip  by  the  Serbs  after  their  evacuation 
of  Belgrade.  The  next  day  the  left  wing  of 
the  3rd  Army  reached  Obrenovatz  and  its  riglit 
occupied    a    line    Konatitche-Borak-Boshdare- 


vatz  Tlie  2nd  Army  occupied  the  summits 
418  and  287,  and  the  Belgrade  force  advanced 
to  a  front  Koviona-Lipa-Krajkovo-bara. 

Thus,  with  disconcerting  suiftnes-s,  the 
Austrians  were  being  pushed  up  into  the 
triangular  sector  of  Serbian  soil  which  ha.s  its 
apex  at  Belgrade.  They  contested  the  ground 
inch  by  inch,  and,  despite  the  cativstrophe 
which  had  befallen  them  farther  south,  they 
manifested  a  grim  determination  to  retain 
possession  of  the  capital.  Although  the  enemy 
had  been  driven  in  rout  from  all  the  territory 
lying  between  the  Save  and  the  Drina  b\- 
December  13,  with  such  desperation  did  In- 
cling  to  Belgrade  that  he  delivered  re2:)catcd 
counter-attacks  upon  the  positions  of  Koviona 
and  Krajkovo-bara  before  ho  finally  retired 
north  in  a  dense  column  of  panic.  The  vic- 
torious Serbians  followed  up  the  retreat  with 
great  vigour  and  jjressed  along  the  banks 
of  the  Topchiderska  river  on  the  left  and  up 
the  main  road  on  the  right.  The  Austrians 
now  attempted  to  block  the  advance  ])y 
heavy  rearguard  forces  entrenched  on  the 
several  strong  positions  which  distinguish 
that  part  of  the  comitry.  The  hills  command- 
ing the  road  north  of  Ralia,  for  example,  are 
strategic  points  of  inunens&  inihtary  im- 
portance, but  the  Serbs  pushed  ahead  •n-ith 
ever-mcreasing  energy,  so  that  on  the  morning 
of  December  14  they  approached  the  line 
Ekmekluli-Dedigne-Banovobrdo,  the  southern 
defences  of  Belgrade.  Upon  these  hills  the 
Austrians  had  tlarown  up  extensive  eartli- 
works  consistmg  of  well-executed  entrench- 
ments and  numerous  gun  emplacements,  and 
it  was  evident  that  they  had  calculated  there 
to  make  a  determined  stand.  Their  troops 
were,  however,  now  in  a  demoralized  con- 
dition, and  though  the  combats  which  ensued 
were  of  a  very  sanguinary  nature,  nightfall  found 
the  Serbs  in  possession  of  the  heights. 

In  the  meantime  the  Cavahy  Division  had 
been  engaged  in  a  meritorious  attempt  to 
work  along  the  banks  of  the  Save  and  cut  off 
the  Austrian  retreat.  They  were  faced,  how- 
ever, by  the  flat,  marshy  plain  of  Makesh. 
where  the  fire  from  hostile  guns  on  Topchider 
and  two  monitors  in  the  river  effectually  barred 
their  progress. 

The   invaders   comnnenced   the   repassage   of 
the    Save    on    the    morning    of    December    14 
Throughout    the    day,    as    the    news    became 
more  and  more  serious,  the  movement  increased 
in  intensity,   and   during  the  night  developed 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


389 


into  a  huiried  scamper  across  the  river.  Next 
day  at  dawn  the  Serbians  got  their  guns  on 
one  of  the  .  surrounding  hills,  shelled  and 
broke  the  pontoon  bridge,  and  rendered 
further  escape  impossible.  A  detachment  of 
cavalry  then  descended  from  Torlak,  and  while 
it  was  engaged  in  street  fighting  with  a  party 
of  Hvingarians  who  refused  to  surrender, 
King  Peter  drove  into  his  capital,  and  pro- 
ceeded to  the  cathedral  to  render  thanks  for 
the  success  of  Serbian  arms. 

The  Special  Correspondent  of  The  Times, 
writing  after  his  return  to  Kragujevatz,  thus 
described  his  impressions  of  the  great  battle  : 

The  road  to  Suvobor  follows  a  pleasant  enough  valley, 
now  winding  and  twisting  round  cliff  or  crag,  now  striding 
some  half-dry  waterway  over  a  crude  bridge,  and  again 
bisopting  a  little  village  that  seems  all  church  and  coffee 
shop.  Then,  as  we  left  the  low  foothills  and  were 
pushed  up  the  ever-rising  slopes  of  tho  range,  we  topped 
a  domineering  ledge  and  entered  the  battlefield. 

Here  was  the  aftermath  of  war.  Deep-diig  trenches, 
fields  spitted  with  gaping  holes  bored  by  falling  shells 
that  had  shot  the  earth  up  fountain-like,  broken  rifles, 
bits  of  clothing,  knapsacks.,  and  still  unbuvied  corpses. 
Ploughed  land  and  stubble  that  had  been  flattened  by 
thousands  of  warring  feet  as  the  tide  of  victory  ebbed 
and  flowed ;  well-worked  Serbian  earthworl<s  in  the 
rear  and  then  little  mounds  thrown  up  by  the  advancing 
infantry  as  they  crept  onwards  to  the  enemy.  Then 
the  signs  of  the  final  rush  that  sent  the  Austrians  head- 
long towards  Valievo. 

It  had  been  no  sudden  flight,  this  retreat  from  Suvobor. 


Rather  had  the  wave  of  disaster  risen  in  a  rreacendn  from 
a  small  beginning  until  it  reached  the  dimensions  of 
dihdcle.  At  first  there  had  b?en  time  and  to  spare,  for 
the  early  prizes  consisted  of  mountain  howitzers  placed 
in  almost  inaccessible  positions  and  limbers  from  which 
the  guns  had  been  lifted  at  no  little  pain  and  carefully 
buried.  We  =aw  them  there,  neatly  interred  on  the 
mountain-side  in  graves  surmounted,  like  those  of  fallen 
warriors,  with  a  wooden  cross,  the  better  to  conceal 
their  hiding. 

Farther  along  were  heavy  siege  guns  left  by  the  road- 
side, their  breechblocks  removed  and  every  accessory 
easilj'  transportable  carried  off.  Thus  early  the  retreat 
was  difficult  to  understand.  The  Austrians  had  held 
well-entrenched  positions  of  undoubted  military  value. 
Line  after  line  of  rising  crests,  each  commanding  the 
other,  pdl  with  an  excellent  field  of  fire  over  the  country 
before  them,  had  been  held  and  well  foitified.  The 
approacfies  were  always  of  the  most  arduous.  Yet, 
more  and  more  impetuously  as  the  battle  progressed 
these  strongholds  had  been  successively  abandoned, 
until,  shortly  after  the  Lyg  and  the  little  ''illage  of 
Gukoshi  were  left  behind,  the  real,  live,  panic-stricken 
rout  commenced. 

One  might  as  well  seek  to  print  the  lily  as  try  to 
describe  the  scene.  Take  the  tableau  near  Gomi 
Toplitza,  where  the  road  winds  round  a  commanding 
promontory  which  overhangs  the  valley.  Right  on  the 
edge  of  the  cliff,  protected  by  a  copse  of  prune  trees,  the 
Austrians  had  placed  a  battery  of  field  guns,  while  in  the 
road  were  placed  a  score  of  ammunition  wagons,  from 
whence  the  guns  were  served  by  crude  little  two-wheeled 
carts.  Deploying  on  the  flank  of  this  position,  the 
Serbian  gunners  had  covered  it  w  ith  a  terrible  enfilading 
fire,  and  men,  horses,  carts,  w.agons,  lay  in  a  mangled 
heap  upon  the  ground.  There  were  dead  horses  in  the 
shafts  of  the  carts  with  dead  men's  hands  still  clutching 
the  bridles — all  shot  down  by  a  veritable  torrent  of 
shell.     Some  few  had  tried  to  escape,  and  as  they  ran 


AUSTRIAN    PRISONERS    CARRYING    SERBIAN    WOUNDED. 


390 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE    WAR. 


SERBIAN    SOLDIERS    COMPLETING    TRENCHES    AND    PUTTING    WIRE 
ENTANGLEMENTS    AROUND    THE    FORTS    OF    BELGRADE. 


they  jettisoned  caps,  cartridges,  and  haversacks,  only 
to  meet  death  themselves  ere  they  could  reach  the  shelter 
of  a  neighbouring  ravine.  It  was  a  pathetic,  moving 
picture  of  bewildered  flight. 

Thereafter  the  Austrians  had  but  one  thought — to 
get  outside  the  range  of  Serbian  guns.  Everything  was 
cast  off.  Cannon  were  left  perfect  and  iminjured  ; 
maxims  abandoned  in  the  trenches  ;  accoutrements  of 
every  description  fairly  littered  the  road.  Some  ammu- 
nition wagons  were  left  fullj'  charged  ;  from  others  the 
live  shell  had  been  pitched  otit  upon  the  roadway  to 
lighten  the  load  until,  with  the  increasing  pressure  of 
the  pursuit,  the  vehicles  themselves  had  been  left 
behind.  Jumbled  up  with  this  mass  of  artillery  were 
countless  transport  wagons  and  innumerable  field  ovens. 
Horses,  fallen  by  the  roadside,  were  loft  to  die  if  injured, 
shot  if  they  had  but  succumbed  to  fatigue. 

Wounded  \vaiTiors  were  abandoned  to  their  fate  ;  dead 
soldiers  uncountable  left  to  add  a  touch  of  blue-grey 
colour  to  the  mass  of  dark -green  carriages.  There  were 
rifles  by  the  thousand,  dropped  by  their  flying  owners. 
Most  were  whole,  others  splintered  by  shot  or  broken  in 
some  of  the  fierce  hand-to-hand  fighting  that  preceded 
the  rout.  Ammunition  littered  the  route  like  the 
coloured  tissues  of  a  paper-chase  ;  sometimes  in  batches 
where  they  had  been  tipped  out  of  the  wagons,  and  again 
sprinkled  over  the  earth  as  the  fugitives  had  emptied 
their  belts  to  ease  the  burden  by  a  few  oiuices. 

Thus  for  mile  upon  naile.  At  every  few  yards  some 
discarded  trophy  ;  in  every  ditch  gun  or  rifle  ammuni- 
tion ;  and  towards  the  end  the  gunners  had  cut  the 
traces  of  their  teams  and  fled  onwards  with  the  horses, 
'i'here  were  few  dead  to  be  seen  now,  for  the  Austrians 
no  longor  stayed  to  fight.  Nothing  seemingly  mattered 
save  to  put  a  distance  between  themselves  and  the 
pursuing  Serbians. 

Before  Valievo  itself  the  garrison  holding  the  town 
had  prepared  the  defence.  The  approach  by  the  main 
road  had  been  entrenched  and  guns  were  in  position. 
But  the  Serbs  were  inconsiderate.  They  went  along  the 
road,  it  is  true  ;  but  their  main  force  deployed  round 
the  hills  and  the  Austrians  wore  taken  as  completely  by 
surprise  as  if  they  had  never  heard  of  their  coming. 
While  the  fugitives  hurried  through  the  town  towards 
Loznitza  and  Shabatz,  a  rearguard  of  Hungarians  on  the 


hills  to  the  north-west  put  up  an  indifferent  fight  before 
they,  too,  fled  in  disorder.  The  last  of  them  were  caught 
by  the  Serbian  artillery,  and  on  the  rising  ground  I  saw 
nigh  a  hundred  lying  stretched  out  on  the  road,  shot 
down  as  they  ran.  A  few — severely  wounded — sat 
nursing  their  sores  amid  their  dead  comrades,  tended  only 
by  a  little  Serbian  lad  who  fetched  water  to  soothe  their 
raging  thirst. 

All  along  this  highway  of  tragedy  we  had  jostled  two 
streams  of  hapless  sufferers.  Going  in  our  own  direction 
were  streams  of  refugees,  their  oxen,  in  divers  stages  of 
life  and  death,  yoked  up  to  every  conceivable  manner  of 
sprinErless  wagon  piled  high  with  the  few  odds  and  ends 
of  furniture  and  bedding  which  they  had  snatched  up 
when  they  fled  before  the  Austrian  advance.  Atop  the 
bundles  lay  starving  and  sick  children,  wan  with  want 
and  exposure  ;  by  the  side  of  the  convej'ances,  urging 
the  emaciated  cattle  along  with  weird  cries  and  curses 
walked  sore-footed  and  weary  women-folk  returning  to 
the  devastated  remains  of  what  were  once  their  homes. 

Crossing  us  came  a  continuous  procession  of  Austrian 
prisoners.  Now  and  again  there  would  be  a  thousand 
or  more  marching  along  in  charge  of  a  couple  of  Serbians. 
They  were  men  of  every  age,  and  of  every  race  which 
that  hotch-potch  of  nationalities  called  .4ustria-Hungary 
can  provide — recruits,  common  Army,  the  Landwehr 
and  the  Landsturni  ;  Austrians,  Hungarians,  Musulmans , 
Serbs,  Czechs,  Moravians,  Slovanes,  Rumanians,  Rus- 
sians, &c.  A  sorry  enough  crowd,  and  of  them  all  I 
liked  best  the  Bosnian  Musulmans. 

In  between  the  convoys  straggled  men  who  had  fallec 
out  bj'  the  way.  Weary,  pain-stricken  souls,  these,  who 
groaned  and  panted  as  they  staggered  along  by  the  aid 
of  a  supporting  stick  hewn  from  the  roadside  trees. 
Many  of  them,  footsore,  had  sking  their  boots  across 
their  shoulders  and  walked  with  feet  enwrapped  Ln  rags 
of  sack -cloth.  And  ever  and  anon  we  passed  some  blue- 
gi'ey  soldier  stretched  out  by  the  way,  awaiting  death, 
alone  and  unbefriended. 

For  almost  two  months  until  November  11,  when  I 
liad  to  flee  with  the  Headquarters  Staff,  Valievo  had 
been  the  centre  of  my  wanderings,  and  it  was  pleasant 
to  retread  its  cobbled  streets.  The  town  had,  however. 
a  strange  and  deserted  appearance.  Crowds  of  Austrians 
and  but  a  handful  of  Serbs  gave  it  the  air  of  still  being 


I 


THE    TIMES!    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


391 


under  enemy  occupation.  Save  for  one  barracks  and  two 
houses  burned,  the  place  was  outwardly  intact,  and  the 
few  inhabitants  who  had  remained  had  not  been  molested. 
But  never  were  external  impressions  more  misleading, 
for  every  unoccupied  house  had  been  pillaged  from  floor 
to  ceiling.  Room  after  room  had  been  ransacked,  eveiy- 
thing  of  value  pilfered,  and  pictures  of  the  Serbian  royal 
family  defaced. 

What  surprised  one  most,  however,  was  the  state  of 
indescribable  filth  which  these  people  left  behind  them 
and  in  which  they  had  obviously  lived.  The  bedrooms 
which  had  been  occupied  by  officers  and  men  alike  were 
positively  pestilential.  Worse,  indeed,  were  the  hospitals. 
Three  thousand  Austrian  woimded  had  been  left  in  the 
charge  of  13  doctors  with  ambulance  staffs,  and  yet  the 
men  were  lying  anywhere  and  anyhow  on  handfuls  of 
hay,  suffering  and  dying  in  a  condition  of  appalling  filth. 
It  cannot  be  suggested  that  Austrian  doctors  knew  no 
better  ;  but  this  experience,  taken  with  the  many  other 
evidences  of  indifference  to  the  well-being  of  the  troops 
which  I  have  observed  of  late,  forces  me  to  the  conclusion 
(hat,  in  the  eyes  of  his  superiors,  the  Austrian  soldier 
ceases  to  be  worthy  of  consideration  the  moment  he  is 
indefinitely  pvit  out  of  action.  He  is  just  "  cannon- 
fodder,"'  as  the  Prussian  has  it. 

From  Valievo  I  hastened  onwards  towards  Belgrade 
and  48  hours  later,  ^-cached  the  outskirts  of  the  capital. 
The  previous  daj'  (December  14)  had  seen  fighting  of  a 
very  deterniined  character.  Driven  back  on  to  a  ring 
of  commanding  hills,  of  v/hich  Torlak  may  be  taken  as 
the  centre,  the  Austrians  had  there  put  up  their  last 
defence.  These  positions  were  captured  the  same 
evening,  not,  however,  without  heavy  sacrifice.  The 
Commandant  of  the  Serbian  force  which  attacked  this 
sector  stated  that  his  men  alone  had  buried  1,800  dead 
Austrians,  and  he  described  the  fighting  as  the  stiflest 
of  the  campaign. 

When  we  arrived  in  the  rear  of  the  Army  on  the  15th 
the  Serbian  gunners  were  firing  through  a  cloud  of  fog 
and  rain  against  the  pontoon  bridge  over  the  Save,  and 
on  a  hostile  reaiguard  without  the  city.  The  opposition 
was  soon  overcome,  and  a  detachment  of  cavalry  rode 
in,  closely  followed  by  King  Peter.  The  Serbian  Monarch 
is  an  old  campaigner,  and  the  fact  that  street  fighting 
was  still  going  on  had  no  more  effect  on  his  enthusiasm 
than  the  inclemency  of  the  weather.  He  stayed  to 
trample  under  foot  a  Hungarian  flag  freshly  hauled  down 
from  the  Palace,  and  then  attended  a  hastily  arranged 
Te  Deum  at  the  Cathedral. 

Ninety    minutes    later   the    Cro^vn    Prince    Alexander, 


accompanied  by  his  brother.  Prince  George,  a  strong 
cavalry  escort,  and  the  British  Military  Attache,  ap- 
proached Belgrade.  They  were  met  on  the  outskirts  by 
a  crowd  of  poor  women  and  children  who,  with  few 
exceptions,  were  the  only  inhabitants  who  had  remained. 
These  joyous  souls,  themselves  dependent  upon  a  pittance 
from  the  municipality  which  had  ceased  with  the  evacua- 
tion, brought  their  all.  They  had  quickly  collected 
masses  of  chrysanthemums,  and  with  these  they  bom- 
barded and  decorated  the  incoming  heroes  until  they 
pranced  over  a  veritable  pathway  of  flowers.  The  maidens 
brought  the  embroidered  scarves  and  sashes  which  they 
had  worked  in  preparation  for  marriage,  and  these  they 
hung  about  the  cavaliers  till  the  men  looked  like  so 
many  garcons  d'honneur  at  a  Serbian  village  wedding. 
Hugo  tricolor  streamers  now  hung  from  the  mansions  ; 
little  bits  of  dirty  flags  from  the  cottages.  There  was  a 
touch  of  heartfelt  simplicity  about  this  welcome  from 
deserted  Belgrade  that,  to  the  looker-on,  was  most 
impressive. 

The  Austrian  occupation  of  Belgrade  had 
lasted  but  for  foiu-teen  days,  and  even  in  the 
retrospect  had  something  of  the  unfinished 
about  it.  The  invaders  had  evidently  settled 
down  for  a  prolonged  stay.  Under  the  guidance 
of  their  late  military  attache  in  Serbia,  they 
established  themselves  in  the  best  available 
buildings,  commenced  to  repair  the  roads 
which  they  had  themselves  ripped  oi^en  by 
shell  fire,  and  setup  a  pretence  of  city  adminis- 
tration. On  the  Torlak  hiUs  solid  earthworlcs 
I^rotected  by  barbed  wire  entanglements  had 
been  constructed,  and  concrete  foundations 
were  ready  for  the  big  guns.  Yet  they  had 
scarcely  had  time  to  decide  what  they  would 
do  with  Belgrade  before  the  Serbian  hosts 
swooped  down  and  drove  them  helter-skelter 
back  across  the  Save.  Thus  the  good  and 
evil  which  was  the  city's  lot  depended  largely 
upon  individual  benevolence  or  malice.  Two 
currents — the  one  respect  for  civilians  and  the 


DRAWING  WATER  FOR  THE  TROOPS. 


392 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


other  the  product  of  Prussian  example — ran 
side  by  side.  The  buildings  occupied  by  one 
military  authority  remained  cleanly  and  intact, 
even  King  Peter's  photograph  being  left  vm- 
damaged ;  in  others  filth  was  everywhere, 
furniture  destroyed,  and  the  Royal  image  shot 
and  slashed  to  ribbons.  Entire  sections  of  the 
town  escaped  pillage ;  other  quarters  were 
pitilessly  looted  from  end  to  end.  While  tlie 
Cathedral  and  various  other  churches  were 
not  seriously  damaged,  the  General  Post  OfTfice 
was  completely  wrecked  ;  all  the  furniture  in 
the  Parliament  House  was  destroyed  and 
broken,  and  the  Royal  Palace  was  officially 
stripped  from  floor  to  ceiling,  and  the  contents 
carted  off  into  Hungary  in  furniture  vans 
brought  specially  from  Semlin  for  the 
piu-pose. 

The  troops  of  the  Dual  Monarchy  made  their 
unopposed  entry  into  the  capital  with  flags 
flying  and  bands  playing.  There  was  much 
merry  making,  much  feasting  and  drinking. 
The  Hixngarian  banner  floated  from  the  Palace, 
and  twelve  peasants  were  hanged  in  the  centre 
of  the  town.  The  news  of  the  "  conquest " 
was  flashed  to  Vienna  and  Berlin,  where  it  was 
the  occasion  of  great  and  enthusiastic  rejoicings. 

Yet,  even  at  this  epoch,  when  easy  victory 


over  the  Serbians  seemed  beyond  doubt,  the 
Austrian  authorities  manifested  that  same 
indifference  for  the  welfare  of  their  soldiery 
which  had  been  so  painfully  apparent  at 
Valievo.  Their  medical  service  was  hopelessly 
disorganised.  With  the  army  of  occupation 
came  800  wounded  from  other  theatres.  They 
had  spent  many  days  on  the  road,  racked  with 
pain  and  unattended,  and  on  arrival  at  Bel- 
grade, they  were  unloaded  upon  the  small 
American  Red  Cross  unit  already  burdened 
with  a  charge  of  1,200  manned  Serbians. 
Day  by  day  further  batches  of  dirty,  neglected 
Austrian  warriors,  their  sufferings  augmented 
by  hunger  and  inattention,  were  deposited  in 
the  American  Hospital,  until  it  sheltered  nearly 
3,000  patients.  Althougli  the  Staff  strove 
heroically  to  cope  with  the  avalanche  which 
had  thus  suddenly  descended  upon  them, 
they  received  no  assistance  from  the  Aastrian 
doctors,  who  were  manifestly  incompetent  or 
luiwilling  either  to  instal  hospitals  of  their 
own  or  to  assist  the  overwrought  little  band 
of  American  surgeons  and  nurses.  Up  in  th 
town  the  Staffs  were  banquetting  and  cele- 
brating their  "  victory  "'  in  a  debauch  of  wine  ; 
down  in  the  hospital  the  woiinded  starved 
imtil    Dr.    Ryan — the    energetic    haad    of    the 


A    FIELD    HOSPITAL    NEAR    THE    BATTLEFIELD. 


THE     TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


393 


EFFECT    OF    SHELL    FIRE    ON    SOME    SHOPS    IN    BELGRADE. 


mission — took  a  brougham  and  forcibly  com- 
mandeered 400  loaves  from  a  military  bakery. 

When  the  evacuation  commenced,  the 
Austrians  took  not  their  own  people,  but  the 
wounded  Serbians,  whom  thej^  transported 
into  Hungary  to  swell  the  numbers  of  their 
prisoners  of  war.  Several  hundred  natives 
of  Belgrade — the  exact  number  will  probably 
never  be  established — were  led  captive  into 
Austria-Hungary.  A  few  of  these  were  males, 
and  included  a  boy  of  nine  years  of  age  and  an 
old  man,  deaf  and  dumb  ;  the  rest  were  women 
and  girls. 

It  was  on  the  morning  of  December  14,  that 
the  real  preparation  for  departiu-e  conunenced. 
A  Staff  officer  visited  Dr.  Ryan,  and  requested 
him  to  take  charge  of  the  Austrian  wounded 
who  must  needs  be  abandoned,  and  thence- 
forth there  went  a  procession  of  wagons  across 
the  Save  and  along  the  road  to  Semlin.  As 
the  day  wore  on,  and  the  news  from  Torlak 
became  more  and  more  serious,  the  movement 
developed  into  a  wild  rush  for  the  other  shore, 
and  the  pontoons  were  choked  with  transport. 
Cannon,  it  is  stated  on  very  good  authority, 
were  unlimbered  and  thrown  into  the  river,  and 
troops  fought  among  themselves  for  precedence. 

All  through  the  night  the  panic-stricken 
retreat  continued,  until,  on  th(>  early  inorning 


of  the  15tli,  the  Serbian  gunners  shot  away 
three  of  the  pontoons.  At  that  time  the 
stream  of  fugitives  stretched  from  the  bridge 
away  down  the  road  towards  Obrenovatz.  In 
the  streets  of  Belgrade  the  Austrians  left  five 
cannon,  eight  ammiinition  wagons,  1,000 
hoi'ses,  and  440  transport  wagons — many  of  the 
latter  filled  with  loot  from  the  city.  Some 
150  junior  officers  and  10,000  men  likewise 
found  their  retreat  thus  suddenly  cut  off, 
but  among  them  there  were  few  officers  of 
high  rank.  The  army  chiefs  were  among  the 
first  to  leave.  In  the  officers'  mess  lay  the 
evening  meal  of  the  14  th — the  soup  half 
consumed,  the  wine  half  drunlv. 

Thus  ignominiously  ended  the  third  Austrian 
invasion  of  Serbia.  Of  the  army  of  300,000 
men  who  crossed  the  Drina  and  Save  rivers, 
certainly  not  more  than  200,000  returned. 
In  the  last  13  days  of  combat  the  Serbs  cap- 
tured 41,538  prisoners  (including  323  officers), 
and  an  enormous  booty,  including  133  cannon, 
71  machine  guns,  29  gun  carriages,  386  ammuni- 
tion wagons,  45  portable  ovens,  3,350  tran- 
sport wagons,  2,243  horses  and  1,078  oxen. 
The  Austrian  killed  and  wounded  numbered 
not  less  than  60,000. 

Though  there  were  successes  more  vast,  it 
is  doubtful  whether  any  had  a  more  important 


394 


THE     TIMl^:S    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


ALBANIAN    RECRUITS    AT    MEAL    TIME. 

bearing  upon  the  progress  of  the  great  war. 
Kouinanovo,  Monastir  and  the  Jadar  did 
much  to  establish  the  martial  prestige  of  Serbia  ; 
but  the  victory  of  Suvobor  constitutes  one  of 
the  finest  deeds  in  military  history,  and  is 
unique  in  its  example  of  the  manner  in  which 
an  army,  ill-equipped  and  without  reserves, 
was  able,  notwithstanding  the  absence  of 
material  and  the  fatigue  of  unceasing  work  in 
the  trenches,  and  with  almost  certain  defeat 
staring  it  in  the  face,  to  rise  up. and  snatch  a 
brilliant  and  decisive  victory  out  of  a  menacing 
and  dangerous  situation. 

The  presence -of  the  King  in  the  firing  line, 
the  strategy  of  the  Staff,  the  arrival  of  the 
gun  ammunition,  and  the  leadership  of 
Mishitch,  all  contributed  to  the  glorious 
result  of  this  great  battle  ;  but  the  pride  of 
place  <must  be  accorded  to  the  gallant  Serbian 
peasant  soldiers  who,  worn  out  by  years  of 
warfare,  suffering  from  hardships  luiheard  of 
in  other": armies,  and  demoralized  by  weeks  of 
unaccustomed  retreat,  rose  up  with  renewed 
courage  at  their  country's  call,  and,  with 
xinsur passed  vigour  and  elan,  drove  the  well- 
armed  and  disciplined  armies  of  the  Hapsbiu-gs 
beyond  their  frontiers  in  utter  rout. 

THE    AUSTRIAN    ATROCITIES. 

The  Austrian  "  Straf expedition  "  of  August 
1914,  resulted  in  ignominious -failure  ;  the  first 
invasion  of  Serbia  ended  in  the  headlong  flight 
of  the  Imperial  and  Royal  soldiers  ;  but  the 
Serbian  nation  was,  nevertheless,  punished 
in  a  manner  so  cruel  and  savage  as  scarce 
finds  a  parallel  in  the  bloodstained  pages  of 
Balkan  history.  The  calamity  was  not,  of 
course,  so  vast  as  that  which  overtook  Belgium  : 


but  in  proportion  to  the  population  it  was 
infinitely  greater.  The  Austrian  armies  "  out- 
Prussianized  the  Prussians  "  in  their  treatment 
of  the  peaceable  peasant  population  of  the 
country  they  had  invaded. 

Even  the  trumpery  excuse  that  troops  had 
been  fired  on  from  private  houses  was  in  this 
case  absent,  for  the  villages  were  denuded  of 
firearms,  and  all  males,  save  those  too  young 
or  too  old,  or  those  suffering  from  some  physical 
incapacity,  were  with  the  colours.  Yet  the 
Austrians,  beaten  on  the  battlefield,  avenged 
themselves  by  the  slaughter  of  defenceless 
women  and  children. 

In  the  course  of  the  description  of  the  battle 
of  the  Jadar,  reference  was  made  to  the  recaj)- 
ture  of  the  position  of  Marianovitchevis,  when 
an  Austrian  officer  and  500  men  were  taken 
prisoners.  The  officer  in  question  was  a  Major 
Baltzarek — a  Moravian  by  nationality.  He 
was  afforded  every  courtesy,  and,  as  befitted  his 
rank,  sent  to  Valievo  under  escort  of  a  Serbian 
officer.  Shortly  after  his  departure  the  SerLs 
discovered  near  the  position  seventeen  jiersons 
— old  men,  women,  and  children — who  had  been 
bound  together  and  massacred.  Peasants 
declared  that  the  outrage  had  been  committed 
at  the  order  of  Baltzarek  ;  one  of  the  victims — 
an  old  man  who  had  had  the  veins  of  his  wrists 
severed — was  still  alive  and  supported  the 
accusation. 

A  telephone  message  sped  along  the  wires 
which  follow  the  road  ;  the  murderer  was  re- 
called, and,  now  bound  and  under  a  guard  of 
soldiers  with  fixed  bayonets,  brought  back 
and  confronted  with  the  results  of  his  ghastly 
deed.  Then,  whining  for  mercy  for  himself 
and  pity  for  his  wife  and  family  in  iNIoravia, 
he  was  conducted  to  Valievo  to  stand  his  trial 
by  court-martial.  Before  the  door  of  the  tri- 
bunal, his  cords  were  unloosed,  and,  darting 
a  hand  from  pocket  to  mouth,  he  swallowed 
a  tablet  of  poison,  tottered,  and  fell  at  the  feet 
of  his  warders. 

The  truth  of  the  massacre  at  Marianovitchevis, 
like  others  perpetrated  in  the  same  lo'^ality, 
was  attested  by  a  commission  which  included 
Dr.  A.  van  Tienhoven,  of  The  Hague. 

A  factor  which  served  to  augment  the  suffer- 
ings of  the  populations  was  the  advice  gi\en  to 
the  inhabitants  to  go  quietly  about  their  affairs 
when  the  AiLstrians  entered.  This  war,  they 
were  told,  differed  from  the  two  preceding 
campaigns  in  that  it  was  being  wag-^d  with  a 
civilized  European  Power,  and  r.  on -combat  mts 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


395 


had,  therefore,  nothing  to  fear.  Yet  there  is 
no  doubt  that  many  crimes  were  at  least 
condoned  by  Austrian  officers.  Even  the  order 
issued  by  the  "  Imperial  and  Royal  Command- 
ment "  having  regard  to  the  "  Instructions 
for  the  conduct  of  the  troops  towards  the  popu- 
lation in  Serbia,"  was  a  direct  incentive  to 
massacre : 

"  You  are  engaged  in  war,"  read  this  instructive 
document,  a  copy  of  which  was  found  on  tlie  body  of 
a  wounded  officer,  "  in  a  hostile  country  inhabited  by 
a  population  possessed  of  a  fanatical  hatred  towards 
us  ;  in  a  country  where  cowardly  assassination,  as 
the  catastrophe  of  Sarajevo  showed,  is  held  to  be  per- 
missible even  by  the  upper  classes,  and  where  it  is  glori- 
fied as  an  act  of  heroism. 

"  For  such  a  population  any  disposition  towards 
humanity  or  kindliness  would  be  entirely  misplaced  ; 
it  would  even  be  fraught  with  danger,  for  such  sentiments, 
which  may  occasionally  be  exercised  in  time  of  war, 
would  here  constitute  a  continual  menace  to  the  security 
of  our  troops. 

"  I  therefore  order  that  during  the  military  operations 
everyone  shall  be  treated  with  the  greatest  suspicion 
and  harshness. 

"  In  the  first  place,  I  will  not  allow  persons  armed, 
but  wearing  no  uniform,  to  be  taken  prisoners  ;  they 
must  be  executed  without  exception.* 

"■  In  any  case  (in  passing  through  a  hostile  village) 
hostages — priests,  schoolmasters  and  rich  men — must  be 

*  The  true  import  of  this  paragraph  will  be  realized 
when  it  is  remembered  that,  as  the  Austrians  well 
knew,  the  Serbians  had  not  received  their  new  uni- 
forms. At  least  one-third  of  their  Army  was  obliged 
to  take  the  field  in  ordinary  peasants'  dress. 


taken  and  kept  until  the  last  house  has  been  passed, 
and  they  must  be  all  killed  if  a  single  shot  is  fired  at  the 
troops. 

"Any  person  encountered  outside  an  inhabited 
place,  and,  above  all,  in  forests,  must  be  considered 
only  as  a  member  of  an  irregular  band  who  has  hidden 
his  arms  somewheie." 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  mountain 
range  of  Tzer  practically  divided  the  two  chief 
theatres  in  which  the  battle  of  the  Jadar 
was  fought.  In  the  northern  sector  the 
Austrians  retreated  westward  and  northward, 
and  it  is  significant  that  between  the  Dobrava 
and  the  Drina  rivers  there  stretched  a  chain  of 
villages,  viz.  : — Grushitch,  Tsulkovit(5h,  Des- 
sitch,  Belareka,  Chokeshina,  Leshnitza  and 
Prnjavor,  in  which  the  fugitives  left  their 
bloody  mark. 

While  every  hamlet  through  which  they 
passed  had  its  story  of  murder,  pillage,  and  out- 
rage to  tell,  while  every  roadside  displayed 
its  advertisement  of  Austrian  savagery,  the 
first  outstanding  example  was  presented  by 
the  village  of  Grushitch.  There  all  the  houses 
were  looted,  the  mayor  and  twenty  other  of 
the  inhabitants — mostly  young  women,  youths, 
and  children — were  put  to  death,  and  many 
of  the  aged  males  carried  off  into  captivity. 

The  neighbouring  village  of  Tsulkovitch 
through   which   the   Hapsburg  soldiers   retired 


SERBIAN    SOLDIERS    RESTING. 


390 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE     WAU. 


rA- 


J 


IN    THE    TRENCHES. 


after  their  first  defeat  on  Belikamen,  was  the 
subject  of  special  attention.  As  the  advance 
guard  of  the  Serbians  le.ft  a  village  where  they 
had  discovered  a  group  of  three  men  and  two 
old  women  lying  with  their  throats  cut,  they 
entered  a  neighbouring  ravine  which  offered 
the  desolating  spectacle  of  an  indiscriminate 
mass  of  twenty-five  boys  aged  12  to  16  years, 
and  two  old  women  of  over  60,  all  riddled  with 
bullets  and  mutilated  by  bayonet  thrusts. 
In  the  village  itself,  one  terrifying  picture 
after  another  met  their  sickened  gaze. 

From  the  neighbouring  village  of  Dessitch, 
lying  a  few  miles  to  the  south-west,  the  entire 
population  had  fled,  leaving  the  deserted 
cottages  to  the  care  of  five  women,  four  old 
men,  and  five  infants — all  slaughtered  before 
the  "  Swaba  "  left. 

The  Austrians  thoroughly  looted  Chokeshina, 
a  little  hamlet  consisting  of  but  a  sprinkling 
of  houses.  At  Leshnitza.  on  August  19, 
they  shot  fifty  peasants  before  the  eyes  of 
an  assembly  of  women  and  children  of  the 
locality,  with  the  object  of  terrorizing  the 
population.  The  town  was  pitilessly  sacked  ; 
all  objects  which  could  be  carted  off  were 
taken,  and  the  rest,  such  as  stores  of  grain,  were 
soaked  with  petroleum  and  fired.  Before  the 
retreat  a  further  massacre  was  ordered,  and 
over   one  himdred   of  its  victims  were  buried 


in  a  trench  dug  in  front  of  tlic  railwaj'  station. 
Nearly  fifty  persons  were  led  off  into  captivity. 

Prnjavor  was  another  of  those  towns  which 
the  Austrians,  for  some  unexplained  reason, 
singled  out  for  special  treatment.  They  re- 
duced half  of  it  to  a  smoking  shambles. 
Immediately  upon  the  entry  of  the  Imperial 
and  Royal  soldiery,  many  of  the  male  inhabi- 
tants were  seized  and  shot  in  the  cafe  of  jNIilan 
Milutinovitch,  and  all  stores  were  confiscated. 
The  houses  were  perquisitioned,  and  everything 
of  value  removed,  particular  affection  being 
shown  for  the  bridal  robes  of  young  women.  A 
reign  of  terror  for  the  unfortunate  inhabitants 
accompanied  the  occupation.  The  destruc- 
tion of  the  town  followed  the  reception  of  the 
order  to  retreat.  In  many  cases  the  owners 
of  the  habitations  were  driven  inside  their 
property  before  fire  was  applied,  and  thus 
perished  in  the  flames,  and  it  was  no  uncommon 
thing  to  discover  among  the  debris  the  chaired 
bodies  of  young  mothers  clutching  their  infants 
to  their  breasts. 

At  Shabatz  the  Austrians  allowed  their 
savagery  full  and  unbridled  demonstration. 
Immediately  after  their  entry  a  patrol  arrived 
before  the  house  of  a  rich  resident,  with  a 
written  document,  and  demanded  the  delivery 
of  six  valuable  horses  which  occupied  his 
stables.     Later  on  they  burned  down  his  house. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


397 


Animals,  stores  of  fodder,  and  such  like  were 
commandeered  in  a  formal,  if  irregular  manner. 
Houses  were  occupied  in  accordance  with  the 
laws  of  warfare,  and  the  inhabitants  were 
assured  by  proclamation  of  their  personal 
safety. 

Presently  the  official  control  was  relaxed  ; 
soldiers  commenced  to  steal  objects  of  minor 
value  but  military  utility.  Then  came  a  raid 
upon  provisions  in  any  shape  or  form,  to  be 
•crowned,  prior  to  evacuation,  by  the  general 
looting  of  the  town.  Not  a  house  or  a  shop 
escaped  this  pillage.  Every  habitation  was 
ransacked  from  floor  to  ceiling,  and  everjrthing 
of  value  was  carted  off  across  the  Save.  Shops 
were  turned  inside  out  and  their  contents 
thrown  into  the  streets  ;  banks  and  offices 
■wrecked  and  safes  prized  open  and  the  contents 
rifled.  In  fact,  the  appearance  of  the  whole 
place  suggested  that  an  army  of  expert  burglars 
had  descended  upon  it,  worked  their  will  for 
some  time,  only  to  be  disturbed  with  the  job 
still  unfinished.  Drawers  and  cupboards  had 
been  hurriedly  sacked,  and  their  contents 
scattered  about  in  the  hunt  for  valuables,  and 
so  they  were  left,  standing  open  amid  the  litter 
of  the  rooms,  no  time  havmg  been  availabk' 
even  to  close  them.  A  strange,  cruel  air  of 
devastation  permeated  the  streets  where  mer- 


chandize, gramophones,  broken  furniture,  and 
safes  lay  jumbled  up  with  wine  and  spirit 
barrels,  whose  contents  had  been  let  rim  to 
waste  along  the  cobbled  gutters. 

Incessant  shell  fire  wrecked  all  the  public 
buildings  and  hundreds  of  houses  and  shops, 
and  what  the  guns  failed  to  accomplish  Austrian 
soldiers  completed  by  fire.  The  fine  old  church 
(which  served  as  a  stable  during  the  occupation) 
was  pitilessly  bombarded,  and  stood  the  centre 
of  a  scene  of  destruction  resembling  nothing 
so  much  as  the  effect  of  some  tremendous 
earthquake.  The  prefecture  was  riddled  by 
shot  and  sheJI,  and  the  same  description  applied 
to  countless  habitations  in  all  directions — 
of  the  extensive  artillery  barracks  but  the  four 
walls  were  left  standing 

In  the  region  of  the  Jadar  valley  similar,  if 
less  extensive,  ma.ssacre  marked  the  Austrian 
retreat. 

At  Pushcarevatz,  Maidan,  and  Draghintse, 
pillage,  outrage,  and  murder  were  freely  in- 
dulged in.  Many  women  were  outraged.  In 
the  villages  of  Cohuritze,  Tsikoti,  Dvomitsa, 
Moikovitch,  Chlivoir,  Stave,  Bastavi,  and 
Breziak,  a  total  of  49  men  and  34  women  were 
left  massacred  and  mutilated. 

There  was,  fortunately,  little  repetition  of 
this  ghastly  savagery  during  the  retreat  which 


RUINS    IN    BELGRADE. 
View  from  the  Royal  Palace  windows. 


398 


THE    TIMEFi    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAB 


SERBIAN   SOLDIER   OF   THE  3rd  BAN. 

followed  the  third  Austrian  invasion.  So 
terrible  had  been  the  disillusionment  of  the 
Serbians  after  the  battle  of  the  Jadar  that 
when  the  enemy  came  again  the  people  flung 
a  little  bedding  into  tlieir  oxen  wagons  and  fled 
in  terror.  Those  who  had  no  conveyance 
walked.  Throughout  the  great  Serbian  retreat 
the  roads  leading  from  the  front  were  blocked 
with  a  constant  stream  of  fugitives  who, 
hvingry  and  rain -sodden,  struggled  along  the 
muddy  roads  in  the  bitter  cold  in  their  search 
for  sanctuarv. 


Thus  originated  the  problem  of  the  Serbian 
refugees.  In  normal  times  there  is  no  poverty 
in  S(!rbia — the  distribution  of  wealth  is  very 
equal,  and  all  have  sufficient  for  their  meagre 
requirements.  But  now  they  lost  all.  More 
than  half  a  million  people  were  reduced  to 
beggary,  and  the  towns  became  choked  with 
applicants  for  food  and  lodging.  Even  more 
disastrous  was  the  fever  which  the  Austrian.^ 
left  behind  them  after  "  Suvobor."  Its  germs 
infected  the  devastated  homesteads,  to  which 
many  of  the  refugees  returned,  and,  more 
powerful  than  the  Hapsburg  soldiers,  it  deci- 
mated the  ranks  of  the  Serbian  Army. 

The  better  to  preserve  an  approximate 
chronological  order  in  the  story  of  the 
Austro-Serbian  Campaign,  it  will  be  advan- 
tageous to  take,  as  an  epoch  in  the  military 
history  of  Belgrade,  that  period  which  began 
at  1  a.m.  on  July  29,  1914,  when  a  detachment 
of  irregulars  beat  off  a  river  steamer  and  two 
troop -laden  barges  which  attempted  to  approach 
the  Serbian  shore,  and  ended  at  9.27  a.m.  on 
December  15  of  the  same  year  with  the  entry  of 
King  Peter  at  the  head  of  his  victorious  army. 
During  these  momentous  four  and  a  half  months 
Belgrade  and  its  inhabitants  tasted  of  all  the 
varied  experiences  of  modern  warfare.  The 
thiuider  of  cannon  and  the  screaming  of  shells 
flrst  startled  and  then  coldly  interested  tham  ; 
attacks  and  counter-attacks  on  riverside  islands 
degenerated  from  an  excitement  to  a  common- 
place ;  ruined  edifices,  wrecked  houses,  and 
slaughtered  civilians  became  an  luunarked 
portion  of  their  everyday  life.  In  quick  suc- 
cession they  passed  through  the  varied  emotions 
occasioned  by  the  evacuation  of  Serbian  troops 
and  the  entry  of  unopposed  Austrians  with 
flaunting  banners  and  blaring  bands  ;  they  saw 
their  women  and  children  taken  as  hostages,^ 
and  their  citizens  hanged,  their  houses  looted 
and  their  homes  despoiled,  and  then,  to  the 
music  of  booming  guns  and  crackling  rifles,  they 
watched  the  hostile  rabble  fight  its  way  back 
across  the  Save,  until,  in  delirious  joy,  they 
went  without  the  city  walls  and  cheered  the 
Serbian  victors  of  the  greatest  battle  in  Balkan 
history. 

For  the  gi-eater  part  of  the  period  under  dis- 
cussion Austrian  cannon  on  land  and  river  poured 
shell,  shrapnel,  and  incendiary  bombs  into  an 
undefended  town  with  intent  to  destroy  the 
evidences  of  State,  civilization,  and  cultiu-e 
which  had  there  been  erected  during  the 
iiundred  odd  years  of  Serbian  independence. 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF     THE    WAR 


399 


Both  Belgrade  and  its  environs  were  devoid 
of  permanent  defensive  works,  and  no  effoit 
was,  in  fact,  made  to  protect  the  capital. 
Those  military  precautions  wliich  were  under 
taken  were  directed  against  any  attempted 
passage  of  the  rivers  Save  or  Danube,  and. 
for  this  reason  also,  the  island  of  Tsiganlia 
to  the  west  of  the  railway  bridge,  continued 
to  enjoy  a  considerable  measure  of  importance. 
With  the  exception  of  the  troops  engaged  in 
the  occasional  expeditions  against  Bezanin 
and  those  stationed  sometimes  in  and  sometimes 
against  Tsiganlia,  the  infantry  played  littk- 
part  in  the  work  of  defence,  but  a  frequent 
use  was  made  of  artillery.  Surrounded  as  he 
was  by  a  series  of  dominating  heights  of  great 
strategic  value.  General  Djivkovitch  had  a 
plethora  of  excellent  gun  positions  at  his 
disposal,  and  he  moved  his  batteries  from  one 
to  the  other  as  the  exigencies  of  the  ever- 
changing  situation  required.  Banovo  brdo,  to 
the  south-west,  and  Topchider  and  Dedigne 
to  the  south,  were,  however,  outstanding 
summits  upon  which  cannon  were  more  or  less 
permanently  installed,  and  it  was  from  these 
points  that  an  almost  continuous  artillery 
duel  was  fought  with  the  Austrian  gunners 
on  Be/ania. 

The  bombardment  of  Belgrade  will  rank 
as  one  of  those  inexcusable  acts  of  vandalism 
which  disgraced  the  European  war.  It  was 
unprovoked,  served  no  military  purpose  what- 
soever., and  could  have  had  for  its  object  only 
the  wanton  destruction  of  private  and  State 
property.  During  the  period  under  discussion 
over  700  buildings  were  struck  by  bombs, 
shell,  or  shrapnel,  and  of  these  but  sixty 
were  the  property  of  the  State.  Nothing  was 
sacred.  The  old,  unarmed  fortress,  with  its 
memories  of  the  Turkish  occupation  ;  the 
University,  where  centred  Serbian  culture  ; 
the  riverside  factories,  which  represented  her 
industrial  progress  ;  the  museum,  which  housed 
priceless  relics  of  Rome  and  Macedon  ;  even 
foreign  legations,  hospitals,  and  pharmacies — 
all  suffered  in  the  lust  for  revenge.  The 
cigarette  factory  belonging  to  the  State  mono- 
poly was  wrecked  by  shell  and  fired  by  grenades; 
tobacco  and  machinery  to  the  value  of  £320,000 
were  destroyed  in  the  flames.  The  foimdries, 
bakeries,  and  all  the  factories  along  the  Serbian 
shore  of  the  river  were  razed  to  -the  ground.  The 
King's  Palace  bore  little  evidence  of  external 
injury,  but  Austrian  howitzers  dropped  sholl 
through  the  roof  until  Uttle  remained  of  the  once 


SERBIAN    SOLDIER    OF    THE    1st    BAN. 

gorgeous  interior.  The  University  was  riddled 
until  the  building,  with  its  classrooms,  labora- 
tories, libraries,  and  workshops,  was  entirely 
demolished.  Even  the  cellars  were  destroyed 
by  groat  shells,  which  broke  down  the  wal.s 
and  pierced  their  way  into  the  very  bowels  of 
the  earth  and  there  exploded.  In  an  ineiiective 
attempt  to  destroy  the  State  and  other  banks, 
one  street  rumiing  up  from  the  water's  edge 
was  ripped  open  from  edge  to  edge. 

Nowhere  were  the  terrible  effects  of  modern 
artillery     more     visible    than    in    the    streets 


400 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OE    THE    WAR. 


SERBIAN     INFANTRY    HAULING    ARTILLERY.        V  The  Times"  Phoiograpk 


themselves.  Missiles  pierced  the  wood  paving 
and  its  concrete  foundations  bj'^  a  small  hole, 
pressed  then*  way  underground  for  some  dis- 
tance and  then  exploded,  throwing  particles 
of  the  roadway  far  and  wide,  and  exposing 
an  immense  hole  often  measuring  15  feet 
in  diameter  by  12  feet  in  depth. 

Though  the  greater  part  of  Belgrade's 
population  fled  the  city  with  the  Government, 
there  remained  many  too  poor,  or,  for  divers 
reasons,  unable  to  move.  It  was  inevitable, 
therefore,  that  a  certain  loss  of  life  should 
have  been  caused.  Most  of  the  victims  were 
quietly  sitting  in  their  own  homes  when  a  shell 
fell  and  buried  their  dead  or  maimed  bodies 
in  the  debris  of  the  shattered  walls.  More 
intrepid  spirits  were  in  the  streets  when  an 
unawaited  shot  laid  them  low.  Yet  others 
were  foully  murdered,  for  Austrian  sharp- 
shooters were  placed  in  positions  covering 
certain  exposed  streets,  whence  they  wantonly 
fired  on  passing  civilians.  In  all,  some  thirty 
non-combatants  were  killed  and  150  wounded. 
The  losses  among  the  mihtary  were  confined 
to  a  few  gendarmes  on  police  duty. 

The     installation    of     two    French     14    cm. 
naval    gmis    at    the    beginning    of    November 


put  an  end  to  the  activities  of  the  Austrian 
monitors  which  had  previously  been  able  to 
steam  into  the  river  and  shell  the  city  with 
impunit3\  The  Frenchmen  sent  their  first 
message  into  Hungary  on  November  8.  The 
damage  inflicted  so  impressed  the  monitors 
that  they  feared  to  venture  again  within 
range.  INIoreover,  spies,  with  whom  there  is 
every  reason  to  beUeve  Belgrade  was  still 
infested,  had  doubtless  advised  the  Aus- 
trians  that  the  mining  of  the  river  had  been 
scientifically  carried  out.  Preparations  for 
offensive  operations  were,  therefore,  afoot 
when  the  sudden  and  vmwelcome  order  was 
received  to  abandon  the  city  and  retire  south- 
ward with  all  the  material  that  could  be  saved. 
The  French  saw  themselves  obliged  to  sacrifice 
their  cannon,  but,  in  the  early  morning,  they 
fired  off  their  stock  of  240  rounds  of  ammunition 
and  in  little  more  than  half  an  hour  deposited 
some  twelve  tons  of  melinite  on  the  enemy 
forts  at  Bezania,  with  such  terrifying  effect 
that  the  garrison  fled  12  miles  into  the  interior. 
Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  the  two  strongholds, 
having  snarled  at  one  another  across  the  divid- 
ing waters  of  the  Save  for  nearly  five  months, 
were  both  evacuated  at  the  same  time. 


CHAPTER    LXI. 

THE  AUTUMN    AND   WINTER 
CAMPAIGN  IN  EASTERN  FRANCE. 

The  Eastern  Front — Before  and  After  the  Passage  of  the  Aisne — -Argonne — Woevre — 
Lorraine — Vosges — Upper  Alsace — Distribution  of  Armies — The  French  Mistakes  in 
Alsace — The  German  Advance  towards  Verdun — Situation  at  End  of  August — The  Line 
of  Fortresses — Fall  of  Manonviller — The  Defence  of  Nancy  and  Toul — Heroes  of 
Lorraine — German  Atrocities — -The  Fight  for  Nancy — German  Failure  and  Retreat — 
The  German  Crowt;?  Prince  and  the  Verdun  Objective— Camp  des  Romains  Destroyed — 
The  St.  Mihiel  Wedge — Fau^ure  to  Reach  Verdun— The  Turn  of  the  Tide — The  Argonne 
Fighting — The  Winter  Campaign — -Campaign  in  Alsace — Position  at  End  of  February,  19 lu. 


ON  the  eastern  frontier  of  France  the 
war  during  the  opening  months  fol- 
lowed in  one  respect  the  same  course 
as  it  did  farther  north.  Up  to  the 
date  of  the  battle  of  the  I\Iarne  there  was  a 
period  of  more  or  less  important  skirmishes 
and  battles  in  the  open  field,  all  along  the  line 
from  Verdun  to  the  Swiss  frontier.  By  the  end 
of  that  time,  or  soon  after  the  passage  of  the 
Aisne,  both  sides  had  strongly  entrenched  them- 
selves in  the  positions  which  they  had  won  or 
to  which  they  had  been  driven  back,  and  from 
the  beginning  of  October  onwards  there  was 
hardly  any  change  in  the  ground  occupied  by 
the  opposing  armies.  For  the  time  being  the 
spectacular  battles  of  the  old  style,  with  the 
huge  loss  of  life  which  they  entailed,  had  come 
to  an  end.  Along  a  front  of  more  than  200 
miles  (from  Verdun  to  Pfetterhausen)  French 
and  Germans  faced  one  another  from  the  shelter 
of  two  almost  continuous  lines  of  trenches,  often 
not  more  than  forty  or  fifty  yards  or  even  less 
a[)art.  The  day  of  the  saj^per  and  miner  had 
come,  backed  up  by  artillery  bombardments 
from  positions  well  in  the  rear,  which  prepared 
the  way  for  short  charges  and  counter-charges 
Vol.  III.— Part  37  401 


by  the  infantry.  The  cavalry  were  dismounted 
and  were  armed  with  rifles  and  spades  instead 
of  swords  and  lances.  In  the  language  of 
Rugby  football,  the  struggle  had  settled  down 
into  a  tight  scrummage  in  mid-field.  Until  it 
')roke  up,  neither  side  was  likely  to  score  any 
goiils. 

The  first  of  these  two  periods,  while  the 
r'^lative  strength  and  fighting  qualities  of  the 
<>;jponents  were  still  miknown,  was  incomparably 
I  he  more  interesting.  There  ■«ere  more  in^por- 
t  ant  ups  and  downs  in  it,  first  one  side  and  then 
the  other  seeming  to  hold  the  advantage,  and 
it  was  always  full  of  dramatic  possibilities. 
Unlike  the  operr*tions  farther  north,  where  the 
allied  forces  retreated  or  advanced  as  a  compact 
whole,  in  obedience  to  one  concerted  plan  or 
necessity  of  action,  the  fighting  in  the  Argonne, 
the  Woevre,  Lorraine,  the  Vosges,  and  Upper 
Alsace  was  split  up  into  several  sub -sections, 
more  or  less  closely  corresponding  with  these 
territorial  divisions.  In  each  of  them  almost 
anything  might  have  happened. 

There  was  first,  between  Reims  and  Verdun, 
what  a  special  correspondent  of  The  Times  called 
the  guerre  des  apaches  between  the  Third  French 


102 


THE     TIMES    TITSTOnV    OF    THE    IF.  17?. 


ijpn'Tr' 


AFTER    A    FRENCH    VICTORY    IN    ALSACE. 
.      German  prisoners  being  brought  into  Belfort. 


Army  under  General  Sarrail  and  the  force  com- 
manded by  the  Crown  Prince,  which  was  to 
have  been  the  connecting  Unk  between  the 
armies  which  entered  France  by  way  of  Bel- 
gium and  those  which  advanced  by  the.  legiti- 
mate avenue  of  attack  between  the  Dnchy  of 
Luxemburg  and  the  Vosges.  In  the  Woevre, 
between  the  Meuse  and  the  Moselle,  the  chief 
issue  was  the  repulse  of  the  efforts  of  the  Army 
of  Metz  to  join  the  Crown  Prince  in  investing 
Verdun,  which  resulted  in  the  peculiar  bulge 
in  the  German  line  at  St.  Mihiel.  East  of  the 
Woevre  the  triangle  between  Pont-a-Mousson, 
Nancy,  and  Cirey,  at  tiie  head  of  the  Vo?ges, 
was  the  theatre  of  the  second  great  German 
objective,  the  capture  of  the  unfortified  capital 
of  French  Lorraine.  Below  Cirey,  along  the 
west  side  of  the  Vosges  as  far  as  Epinal,  the 
fighting  was  partly  connected  with  the  attack 
on  Nancy,  and  partly  with  the  French  advance 
into  Alsace  through  the  passes  of  the  Vosges  and 
the  Trouee  of  Belfort  :  and  lastly,  this  French 
offensive  in  Alsace  was  itself  a  flanking  move- 
ment intended  to  support  the  cjiuckly  abandoned 
advance  of  om"  allies  into  the  annexed  province 
of  Lorraine. 

Broadlj^  speaking,  each  of  these  separate 
movements  fonned  part  of  the  general 
scheme  of  operations  by  which  the  Germans 
tried   to  attack  and  the  French  succeeded  in 


protecting  the  great  frontier  fortresses  of 
Belfort,  Epinal,  Toul,  and  Verdim.  The 
offensive  tactics  of  the  French  failed  badly  in 
Lorraine  and  were  only  moderately  successful  in 
Alsace.  But  the  balance  was  in  their  favour. 
The  capture  or  at  any  rate  the  masking  of  the 
fortresses  was  essential  to  the  triumph  of  the 
German  plan  of  campaign.  Except  the  fall 
of  Paris,  there  was  no  object  that  they  were  at 
the  beginning  so  bent  on  or  so  confident  of 
attaining.  After  six  months  of  persistent  effort 
they  were  fm"ther  from  it  than  they  were  at  the 
end  of  the  first  week.  Tliat  in  itself  was  a  \ic- 
tory  of  the  first  magnitude  for  the  arms  of  our 
allies.  It  was  mainly  due  to  the  heroic  stand 
made  in  front  of  Nancy  by  the  Armj'  of  General 
do  Castelnau,  supported  by  General  Dubail  and 
the  First  Army,  during  the  last  days  of  August 
nnd  the  beginning  of  September.  No  chapter  in 
the  history  of  the  first  part  of  (he  \\  ar  was  more 
glorious  for  the  French,  and  none  more  vital. 
If  Nancy  liad  fallen,  Toul  and  \'erdun  would 
ahuost  certainly  have  followed  suit,  and  the 
battle  of  the  Marne  would  have  been  fought  in 
vain,  perhaps  miglit  never  ha\-e  been  fought  at 
all.  No  doubt  it  was  the  issue  of  that  battle 
which  was  the  final  cause  of  the  retirement  of 
the  Germans  in  Lorraine.  But  that  does  not  in 
the  least  detract  from  the  splendour  and  the 
value  of  the  defence  of  Nancy  by  the  famous 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


403 


Vingtieme  Corps,  and  the  other  gallant   army 
Corps  of  the  Annies  of  the  East.* 

The  achievement  was  all  the  more  meritorious 
because  the  prelude  to  it  was  the  serious  defeat 

*For  various  reasons  it  is  dil'licult  to  give  the  com- 
position of  the  cliftLM-ent  armies  with  absolute  accuracy, 
but  the  following  analysis  of  the  troops  on  which  they 
were  based  niny  }>e  of  some  assistance  in  following  the 
operations  in  Knstern  France  from  the  !)eginning  of  the 
A-ar.  The  Belfort  Command,  from  which  was  drawn 
the  army  that  operated  in  Alsace,  consisted  of  the 
garrison  of  the  fortress  imder  Genera!  Therenet,  and  the 
Vllth  Army  Corps  (General  Bonneaii).  The  garrison 
troops  were  :  infantry,  the  35th  and  42nd  Regiments  (14th 
Division),  and  171st  and  172ad  (Independent  Division); 
cavalry,  11th  Dragoons  ;  garrison  artillery,  9th  Regi- 
ment :  field  artillery,  47th  Regiment.  The  Vllth 
Army  Corps:  infantry,  23rd,  35th,  42nd,  133rd  (14th 
Divi-iion),  44th,  60th,  and  152nd  (13th  Division);  the 
5th  and  15th  Chasseurs-a-pied  ;  the  11th  and  18th 
Dragoons,  the  4th,  11th,  14th  Chasseurs-a-cheval,  the 
12th  Hussars  ;  the  8th  and  9th  Garrison  Artillery,  and 
the  4th,  5th,  47th,  and  G2nd  Field  ArtUlery.  Their 
business  was  to  guard  the  Trouee  of  Belfort,  and  conduct 
the  offensive  in  Alsace.  The  First  Army  (General 
Dubail)  was  based  on  Epinal,  and  its  original  sphere 
extended  along  the  Vosges  as  far  as  Luneville.  It  was 
niade  up  of  the  Epinal  garrison  and  Field  Army  (170th 
Infantry,  1st,  3rd,  10th,  17th,  20th,  21st  and  31st 
Chasseurs-a-pied,  the  11th  Engineers,  and  the  6th 
Colonial  Artillery)  ;  and  the  XXIst  Army  Corps  : 
infantry,  21st,  109th,  112th  (13th  Division),  and  149th 
and  158th  (43rd  Division),  and  the  12th,  59th,  61st  Fiold 
Artillery.      The   men    composing    this    army   came   from 


at  ^Nlorhange,  between  ]\Ietz  and  Saarbiu-g. 
That  unfortunate  calamity  was  the  outcome 
of  what  was  to  many  minds  the  great  surprise 
and  even  the  great  mistake  of  the  beginning  of 

Lyon,  Epinal,  St.  Die,  Raon  I'Etape,  and  other  places  in 
the  foothills  of  the  Vosges  ;  ^hey  fought  mostly  in  their 
own  country,  and  also  helped  to  defen  i  Nancy. 

The  Second  Army,  General  de  Castelnau'.s,  about 
200,000  men  strong  at  first,  guarded  the  frontier  line 
between  Metz  and  the  Vosges,  especially  Nancy  and 
Toul.  It  consisted  of  the  Toul  garrison,  the  IXth, 
X.Kth,  XVth  and  XVIth  Army  Corps,  and  the  50th, 
68th,  and  another  Division  of  reserve.  In  the  Toul 
garrison  were  the  167th,  16§th,  and  169th  Regiments  of 
infantry,  the  2nd  and  4th  Chasseurs-a-pied,  the  10th  and 
20th  Engineers,  and  the  4th  and  6th  Garrison  Artillery. 
The  two  divisions  of  theXXth  or  L(  rraine  Arrny  Corps, 
commanded  by  General  Foch,  were  the  39th  (the  146th, 
153rd,  156th  and  160th  infantry  regiments)  and  the  11th 
(the  26th,  69th,  37th  and  79th).  To  this  last  Divi.siou, 
the  special  Nancy  contingent,  known  as  the  Division  do 
Fer,  ^^e^e  added  the  5th  Hu.ssars,  the  8th  Field  Artillery, 
and  the  20th  Engineers  and  4th  Garrison  .Artillery 
■stationed  at  Toul  ;  and  the  other  troops  of  the  Army 
Corps  were  the  8th,  12th  and  31st  Dragoons,  the  17th 
and  18th  Chasseurs-a-cheval,  the  39th  and  60th  Field 
Artillery,  and  the  20th  Legion  of  Gendarmerie.  The 
IXth  Army  Coqjs  was  commanded  by  General  Dubois. 
Its  infantry,  drawn  from  the  Tours  district,  were  the 
32nd,  66th,  77th  and  135th  (18th  Divi-^ion),  and  the 
68th,  90th,  125th,  and  114th  (17th  Division).  For 
cavalry  it  had  the  5th  and  8th  Cuirassiers,  the  2oth 
Dragoons,  the  7th  Hussars,  and  the  picked  squadron  of 
S.°-unuu' :    the  20th,  33rd,  and  49th  Field  .-Artillery,  and 


'^...'iKs^ 


■A.  i 


THE    FRliNGH    IN    ALSACE. 
A  railway  station  at  Burnauf,   near  MUlhausen,  occupied   by  the  French  after  a  severe  engagement. 


404 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAIL 


AFTER    THE    BATTLE. 
The  Place  de  Baccarat  and  a  corner  of  Gerbeviller. 


the  war.  For  some  reason  a  large  number  of 
strategists,  professional  as  well  as  amateur,  had 
formed  the  opinion  that  the   only  wise  course 

the  6th  Kegiment  of  Enj,'inecri.  The  XVlth  Army 
Corps  (General  Taverna)  recruited,  from  the  Pyrenees, 
Carcanonne,  Montpellier  and  Lozdre,  contained  the  96th., 
81st,  142nd,  122nd,  15th,  143rd,  53rd,  and  80th  Regi- 
ments, of  the  31st  and  32nd  Divisions,  the  19th 
Dragoons,  1st  Hussars,  and  2nd  Engineers,  and  the  3rd, 
9th,  and  5Cth  Regiments  of  Field  Artillery.  A  special 
tribute  is  due  to  the  airmen  attached  to  General  de 
Castelnau's  army,  who  were  stationed  at  Toul  and 
Mancy.  Apart  from  their  business  of  watching  and 
pursuing  the  enemy  areoplanes,  which  were  constanth' 
dropping  bombs  on  Nancy,  they  did  splendid  recon- 
naissance work  over  the  enemy's  lines  and  military 
centres,  such  as  Metz  and  Strassburg.  They  were 
always  ready  to  take  great  risks  ;  and  unfortunately 
one  of  the  most  valuable  of  them,  the  Senator  Reyn^^ond, 
met  his  death  while  flying  too  low  over  the  Germans 
during  an  engagement.  There  was  a  three  hours'  fight 
for  the  possession  of  his  body,  which  was  won  by  the 
French.  When  they  picked  hun  up  he  was  still  alive.  He 
had  pretended  to  be  dead  in  order  to  deceive  the  enemy, 
and  was  thus  able,  before  he  actually  did  die  a  few 
hours  afterwards,  to  give  to  the  General  the  information 
which  he  had  collected  as  the  result  of  his  too  daring  flight. 
The  XVtli  Army  Corps  (General  Espinasse)  ^vas  also 
a  frontier  force,  recruited  from  Nice,  Grasse,  Mentone, 
Marseilles,  Toulon,  and  other  places  on  the  Mediterranean 
coast.  The  regiments  composing  it  were  the  3rd,  111th, 
ll4th  and    !41st   (20th   Division),  the    40th,   55th,   58th 


for  the  French  was  to  await  the  enemy's  attack 
in  their  own  country.  General  Jotfre  thouglit 
otherwise.      When    there    was    no    longer    any 

and  61st  (30th  Division),  the  163rd  and  173rd  (Inde- 
pendent Division),  the  22nd  Colonial  Infantry  and  3rd 
Colonial  Artillery,  the  0th,  7th,  2.3rd,  24th  and  27th 
Chasseurs  Alpins,  the  6th  and  11th  Hussars,  the  7th 
Engineers,  the  7th  and  10th  G^irrison  Artillery,  the 
19th,  3Sth.  and  55th  Field  Artiller\',  and  two  Legions  of 
Gendarmerie. 

The  Third  Army  (General  Sarrail),  consi.^tiiig  ot  the 
Vlth  and  VIITth  Ai-my  Corps,  wa>  based  on  Vordnn  ; 
the  garrison  and  Field  Arn;y  of  which  was  made  up  of 
the  164th,  16?th,  and  166th  Infantry,  the  8th,  16th, 
19th,  25th,  26th  and  29th  Chassems-i'i-pied.  In  the 
Vlth  Army  Corps  there  were  three  infantry  Divisions, 
the  12th  (the  9ist,  132nd,  147th  and  148th),  tl<e  42nd 
(the  94th,  106th,  151st,  and  lG2nd),  and  the  40th  (the 
150th,  161st,  154th  and  155th)  together  with  the  3rd, 
6th,  and  9th  Cuirassiers,  the  4th,  16th,  21st,  2?nd, 
28th,  and  30th  Dragoons,  the  5th,  10th,  12th,  and  15th 
Chasseur.s-.'i-cheval,  and  the  2nd  and  4th  Hussars. 
These  men  belonged  to  the  district  between  Chalons  and 
Commercy. 

'J'he  Vlllth  Army  Corps  (General  de  Ca.'-telli)  drew  its 
forces  from  the  centre  of  France,  and  contained  two 
infantry  Divisions,  the  15th  (the  10th,  27th,  29th,  and 
o6th  Regiments),  and  the  16th  (the  13th,  85th,  95th, 
and  134th  Regiments),  the  17th  and  26th  Dragoons, 
the  8th,  14th,  and  16th  (!;hasscurs-i-chevai,  the  7th 
Engineers,  t'ne  1st,  37tli,  and  48th  Field  Artillery,  and 
the  8th  Legion  oi  Ciendarmerie. 


AFTER    THE    STORMING    OF    STEINBACH. 
French   troops  standing  in  front  of  houses  destroyed  by  the  heavy  shells  of  the  Germans. 

right  is  a  post  that  divides  France  and  Germany. 


On  the 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


405 


doubt  as  to  the  violation  of  Belgian  territory 
by  the  Germans  he  ordered  a  special  Alsace 
Army,  built  up  round  the  regular  frontier  force 
of  the  Belfort  district,  to  occupy  Miilhausen, 
the  commercial  capital  of  Alsace,  to  cut  the 
Rhine  bridges  at  Huningue  and  below  it,  and 
to  flank  the  attack  of  the  first  and  second  armies 
which  were  to  advance  into  German  Lorraine. 
The  sequel  was  tersely  described  in  a  French 
summary  of  events  published  on  March  22  : 

In  Alsace  this  operation  was  badly  carried  out  by  a 
leader  who  was  at  once  relieved  of  his  command.  Our 
troops,  after  having  carried  Miilhouse  ( Jliilhausen),  lose  it, 
and  were  thrown  back  on  Belfort.  The  work  had  there- 
fore to  be  recommenced  afresh,  and  this  wa.  done  from 
August  14  under  a  new  conmiani')  * 

-Alulhouse  was  taken  (for  tlie  second  time)  on  the  19th 
alter  a  brilliant  fight  at  Dornach.  Twenty-four  guns 
were  captured  from  the  enemy.  On  the  20th  we  held 
the  approaches  to  Colmar,  both  by  the  plain  and  by  the 
Vosges.  The  enemy  had  undergone  enormous  losses 
and  abandoned  great  stores  of  shells  and  forage,  but 
from  this  moment  what  was  happening  in  Lorraine  and 
on  our  left  prevented  us  from  carrying  our  successes 
farther,  for  our  troops  in  Alsace  were  needed  elsewhere. 
On  August  28  the  Alsace  Army  was  broken  up,  only  a 
small  part  remaining  to  hold  the  regions  of  Thann  and 
the  Vosges. 

That  is  a  clear  and  accurate  statement  of 
V  hat  happened.  The  second  occupation  of  Miil- 
hausen was  brought  to  an  end  by  a  voluntary 

*  General  Pau. 


retirement,  and  not  by  pressure  from  the 
Germans.  But  the  first  force,  which  marched 
unopposed  into  the  town  on  August  8,  con- 
sisted of  only  one  Division,  and  was  not  strong 
enough  for  the  task  it  had  been  set  to  accom- 
plish. On  the  following  day  it  fell  into  a  trap 
which  ought  to  have  been  foreseen.  It  was 
badly  defeated  between  Miilhausen  and  the 
Hartz  forest  by  an  army  much  stronger  than 
itself,  reinforced  by  troops  which  were  brought 
south  from  Colmar,  and  was  lucky  in  being 
able  to  fall  back  on  Belfort  without  having 
its  retreat  cut  off.  Little,  therefore,  was 
apparently  gained  by  the  invasion  of  Alsace, 
except  the  excellent  moral  effect  produced 
throughout  France  by  the  feeling  that  part, 
at  all  events,  of  the  ravished  provinces  was 
once  more  occupied  by  the  soldiers  of  the 
Republic.  That,  however,  was  a  very  real 
gain,  upon  which  Gt>neral  Joffre  had  doubtless 
counted.  But  he  had  also  a  simple  miUtary 
aim  in  view,  which  had  escap^  the  attention 
of  most  of  liis  critics.  It  was  given  as  follows 
in  the  summary  of  events  quoted  above  : 

The  purpose  of  the  operations  in  Alsace — nam.ely, 
to  retain  a  large  part  of  the  enemy's  forces  far  from  the 
northern  theatre  of  operations — it  was  for  our  oSensive  in 
Lorraine  to  pursue  still  more  directly  by  holding  before 


THE    FRENCH    INVASION    OF    ALSACE. 
A  notable  scene  In  a  small  Alsatian  town,   the  Inhabitants  of  which  have  never  faltered  In  their 

allegiance  to  France. 

37—2 


406 


THE    TIMES    HISTOHY    OF    THE    WAR. 


it  the  GeiTuan  Amiy  Corps  operating  to  the  south  of 
Metz.  This  offeusive  bi'gan  brillinntly  on  August  14. 
On  the  19th  wo  had  reached  the  region  of  Saarburg, 
and  that  of  the  Etang^  ;  we  held  Dieuze,  Morhange, 
Dpiine,  and  Chateau-Salins.  On  the  20th  our  success  was 
stopped.  The  cause  is  to  be  found  in  the  strong  organi- 
zation of  the  region,  in  the  power  of  the  enemy's  artil- 
lery, operating  over  ground  which  had  been  minutely 
surveyed,  and  finally  in  the  default  of  certain  units. 

On  the  22nd.  in  spite  of  the  splendid  behaviour  of 
several  of  our  Army  Corps,  and  notably  th».t  of  Nancy, 
our  troops  were  brought  back  on  to  the  Grand  Couronno, 
while  on  the  23rd  and  24th  the  Germans  concentrated 
reinforcements — three  Army  Corps  at  least — in  the 
region  of  Luneville,  and  forced  us  to  retire  to  the  south. 

Little  need  be  added  to  this  account  beyond 
the  main  facts  that  the  defaulting  units  belonged 


A    FRENCH    COLONIAL. 
An  Algerian  Infantryman. 

to  the  Fifteenth  Army  Corps  (which,  however,  did 
excellent  work  later  on  both  in  Lorraine  and  the 
Argonne)  and  that  the  leading  French  troops 
had  got  too  far  in  advance  of  their  artillery. 
This  last  was  an  unfortunate  mistake,  as  was 
also  the  choice  of  an  Army  Corps  recruited  in 
the  south  to  form  the  vanguard,  since  the 
troops  composing  it  could  not  be  expected 
to  have  the  same  racial  interest  in  the  reconquest 
of  the  province  as  the  troops  native  to  Lorraine. 
The  whole  movement  appears  to  have  been 
executed  in  too  light-hearted  a  spirit.  It 
began  with  a  series  of  facile  victories  by  which 


the  invading  army  was  lured  on  till  it  suffered 
a  crushing  defeat  at  the  hands  of  oxerwhelm- 
ingly  superior  forces.  The  slaughter  was 
terrible  and  the  retreat  that  followed  was  at 
first  a  rout,  till  the  flying  troops  were  rallied 
and  steadied  by  the  20th  Army  Corps  and  the 
other  regiments  in  reserve,  though  they,  too, 
were  obliged  to  fall  back  ahnost  as  far  as  Nancy, 
fighting  a  strong  rearguard  action  as  they 
retired.  For  the  time  being  the  triumph  of 
the  Gfennans  was  complete.  The  effort  to 
recover  the  lost  province  had  ended  in  a  dismal 
and  costly  failure,  and  there  were  grave  fears 
for  the  safety  of  Nancy  and,  what  was  more 
important,  of  Toul.  Only  one  advantage  had 
been  gained.  The  offensive,  although  it  had 
not  succeeded,  had,  as  General  Joffre  expected, 
necessitated  the  presence  in  Alsace  and  Lorraine 
of  a  very  considerable  German  force.  It 
remained  to  be  seen  whether  the  armies  of 
General  de  Castelnau  and  General  Dubail  were 
strong  enough  to  resist  it. 

L"p  to  tliis  date  (the  beginning  of  the  fourth 
week  in  August)  the  fighting  on  the  rest  of  the 
frontier  was  not  of  great  importance.  In  the 
hope  of  avoiding  hostilities  the  French  for  some 
days  before  war  broke  out  withdrew  their  troops 
a  few  miles  from  the  border.  The  Germans  not 
only  did  not  follow  their  example  but  precipi- 
tated the  conflict  by  sending  small  bodies  of 
patrols  into  French  territory  in  three  or  four 
different  places  (Longlaville,  Cirey,  and  Petit- 
Croix)  before  war  was  declared.  Consequently 
when  it  did  begin  they  were  first  in  the  field. 

To  begin  with,  they  distinctly  scored  by  this 
typical  example  of  German  "  preparedness."' 
While  the  French  were  marcliing  eastwards  in 
front  of  Belfort,  Epinal,  and  Toul,  the  van- 
guards of  armies  from  Strassburg  and  ^letz, 
vmder  General  von  Strantz  and  the  CrowTi 
Prince  of  Bavaria,  advanctti  in  the  opposite 
direction  into  France.  On  August  5,  6,  and  8, 
to  the  south  of  the  army  wliich  was  penetrating 
into  German  Lorraine,  they  bombarded  and 
occupied  Cirey,  Badonviller,  and  Baccarat, 
tliree  small  towns  close  to  the  frontier,  and  to 
the  north  of  it  the  guns  of  St.  Blaize,  one  of  the 
forts  of  Metz,  shelled  Pagny-sur-jNIoselle  and 
Pont-a-ilousson.  Still  farther  north  a  naore 
important  demonstration  was  made  by  the  Army 
of  Metz,  which  quickly  occupied  Briey,  Conflans, 
]Mangiennes,  Damvillers,  and  Spincourt,  and  so 
got  within  about  15  miles  of  Verdim.  Above 
this  district,  on  August  22,  the  Crown  Prince's 
Army,  which  had  crossed  the  frontier  close  to  the 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


407 


w 

l-H 

H 
Z 

o 

OS 


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U    E 

O 

■ 

o 
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z  z 

fc  - 
u 


u 

c 


408 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


Luxemburg  border  near  Longwy  (which  did  not 
however  fall  till  the  27th),  flung  back  a  French 
offensive  from  the  INIeuse  in  tliis  region  and 
pushed  the  French  before  it  across  the  Mouse 
at  Dun,  23  miles  north  of  Verdun,  and,  making 
a  detour  to  the  north-west  of  the  fortress,  con- 
tinued to  press  them  back  till  finally  it  took  up 
its  position  facing  eastwards  between  Bar  le 
Due  and  the  Ardenne  forest,  and  having  the 
army  of  General  Sarrail  opposite  to  it  along  the 
left  bank  of  the  Meuse.  Further  west  the  army 
of  the  Duke  of  Wiirtemberg,  working  south- 
wards  on  the  Crown  Prince's  right,  had  also 
routed  the  French  advancing  from  the  Meuse 
into  the  Ardennes  and  had  crossed  the  Meuse 
-lower  down  near  Meziores,  and  following  a  course 
parallel  to  his  had  advanced  almost  in  step  with 
liim   till   it   was   deployed  along   a   line   facing 


south  between  his  right  wing  and  Eprrnay. 
During  tliese  operations  the  French  gained 
certain  minor  successes  (as  at  Dinant,  where 
the  Duke  of  Wurtemberg's  army  corps  were 
momentarily  repulsed  on  August  15),  but  the 
net  result  was  that  they  were  steadily  and 
surely  driven  back. 

Generally  speaking,  therefore,  at  the  end  of 
August  and  the  beginning  of  September,  the 
French  prospects  on  the  right  wing  of  the  Allies' 
line  were  no  brighter  than  they  were  in  front 
of  Paris.  The  special  Alsace  army  had  retired 
on  Belfort,  and  had  taken  the  place  of  part  of 
the  First  Army  about  as  far  north  a.s  Gerardmer, 
below  St.  Die.  The  First  Army,  tmder  Genera! 
Dubail,  after  occupying  the  crests  of  the  X'osges 
had  been  obliged,  as  a  consequence  of  the  defeat 
at  jNIorhango,  to  fall  back  in  front  of  Epinal,  and 
in  the  footlulls  of  the  Vosges  and  the  \alley  of 
the  Mortagne  as  far  as  Baccarat  was  fighting 
hard  to  keep  the  pursuing  Germans  at  ba}-. 
General  de  Castelnau  with  the  Second  Army  (the 
sphere  of  which  after  the  violation  of  Belgium 
had  been  extended  westwards  from  the  Moselle 
to  Verdun),  was  liolding  the  Grand  Couronne 
east  and  north  of  Nancy  against  several  army 
corps  from  Strassburg  and  Saarburg  under 
General  von  Strantz.  At  the  same  time  it  was 
facing  the  garrison  army  from  ^letz  between 


A    FRENCH    SOLDIER'S    FUNERAL. 

An  impressive  funeral  service  over  two  Garibaldian  heroes. 

Inset  :   Infantryman  in  his  du;g-out. 


THE    TIMES    HlSTOm     OF    THE    WAB. 


409 


LIFE    IN    THE    FRENCH    TRENCHES. 
French  officer  making  observations  from  a  first- 
line  trench. 
Inset :   Receiving  a  message  by  telephone." 

Pont-a-Mousson  and  Commercy  (where  it  had 
the  support  of  the  Toul  garrison),  and  from 
Commercy  northwards  along  the  valley  of  the 
]\Ieuse  past  St.  JVIiloiel  tiU  its  left  rested  on  the 
garrison  defences  of  Verdun.  The  line  was 
then  continued  by  the  Verdun  garrison  force 
facing  outwards  to  the  east,  north,  and  west  of 
the  fortress  round  to  the  south-west,  where  it 
joined  the  third  army  under  General  Sarrail  (now 
back  to  back  with  the  left  wing  of  the  Second 
Army  on  the  other  side  of  the  Meuse),  wMch 
with  the  Foiu-th  Army  under  General  Langle  de 
Gary  was  hard  pressed  by  the  forces  of  the 
Cro^vn  Prince  and  the  Duke  of  Wurtemberg. 
On  the  whole  of  their  front,  therefore,  except 
behind  the  lower  part  of  the  Vosges,  the  position 
of  our  alhes  was  extremely  critical,  especially  at 
the  places  where  they  had  been  driven  back — 
to  the  south-east,  east,  and  north  of  Nancy, 
and  between  Verdim  and  Reims.  The  way  in 
which  little  by  little  they  pressed  the  enemy 
back  till  it  was  they  and  not  the  French  who 
were  acting  on  the  defensive  was  a  splendid 
example  of  unfailing  covzrage  and  determination. 
The  opening  disasters  and  faults  of  generalship, 
instead  of  unnerving  the  French,  steadied  them 


and  filled  them  with  fresh  spirit.  From  the 
moment  when  the  armies  felt  that  they  were 
in  touch  with  each  other,  and  standing  shoulder 
to  shoulder  in  one  unbroken  line,  with  their 
backs  against  the  wall,  they  began  slowly  to 
make  ground  instead  of  yielding  it. 

This  wall  was  no  imaginary  figvire  of  sp(>ech. 
It  was  the  forty-mile  Une  of  fortresses  planted 
along  the  JMeuse  from  Verdun  to  Toul.  For  the 
plans  of  General  Joffre  and  the  safety  of  France 
it  had  to  be  held.  It  could  only  be  held  if  the 
whole  of  the  front  on  the  Allies'  right  wing  stood 
lirni.  Looked  at  as  a  series  of  straight  lines,  that 
front  was  at  tliis  time  likr  tlio  side  \i(>w  of  a 
Windsor  chair,  of  which  the  line  Verdun  to 
Toul  was  the  back,  Toul  to  Nomen_\-  the  seat, 
and  Nomeny  to  St.  Die  the  front  log,  with 
Epinal  at  the  foot  of  the  back  loir.      Aotnaliy  it 


410 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GENERAL    MAUNOURY. 

The  saviour  of  Paris.       He  led    the    Sixth    French 

Army    out    of     the    French     capital    in    taxi-cabs 

and    motor    omnibuses,    and    turned    von    Kluck's 

flank  on  the  Ourcq. 

did  not  qviite  follow  these  lines,  but  extended 
from  Verdiin  to  just  above  Commercy  (a  few 
miles  short  of  Toul  and  west  of  the  Verdun- 
Toul  line),  and  from  there  to  Pont-a-Mousson 
and  Nomeny,  whence  it  curved  slightly  inwards 
between  Nancy  and  Luneville  before,  reaching 
St.  Die. 

In  front  of  this  position  there  was  the 
solitary  fort  of  Manonviller,  ten  niiles  to 
the  east  of  Lvuieville,  of  which  great  things 
were  expected  by  the  Germans  as  well  as  the 
French.  These  expectations  were  not  realized. 
On  August  28  its  garrison  of  900  men  surren- 
dered after  a  two  days'  bombardment,  probably 
carried  out  by  two  Austrian  305  guns  stationed 
at  Avricourt  on  the  frontier.  Many  stories  were 
told  of  its  fall  ;  the  most  clearly  established 
facts  appear  to  be  that  the  fort  was  totally 
demolished,  that  its  own  guns  were  never  fired, 
that  the  garrison  only  lost  four  or  five  killed 
and  wounded,  and  that  the  telephone  communi- 
cation with  Toul  was  found  to  have  been  cut 
off  at  the  beginning  of  the  bombardment — a 
combination  of  circumstances  which  present  a 
not  very  satisfactory  contrast  with  the  story  of 
the  defences  of  Fort  Troyon  and  Longwy. 

Although  Manonviller  did  not  fall  till  six 
days  after  the  occupation  of  Luneville,  when 
the  main  German  armies  were  already  several 
miles  further  west,  it  played  practically  no 
part  in   delaying  the   ad\ance   of  the   enemy. 


The  real  bulwark  of  Nancy  consisted  in  the  field 
armies  of  do  Castelnau  and  Dubail.  The 
troops  composing  them  were  some  of  the  finest 
in  France.  Both  by  training  and  tradition 
they  were  the  frontier  force  of  the  Repubhc. 
In  time  of  peace  they  held  the  post  of  honour 
along  the  vulnerable  border-line  between  Metz 
and  the  Vosges,  always  ready  for  war,  as  their 
ancestors  had  been  for  generation  after  genera- 
tion. Many  of  the  beat  generals  of  France 
had  served  their  novitiate  in  these  famous 
army  corps,  and  ever  since  1870  officers  and 
men,  nearly  all  of  them  children  of  the  soil, 
were  bound  together  at  first  by  the  desire  for 
la  revanche,  and  later,  when  that  died  out, 
by  the  feeling  that  when  the  threatened  German 
invasion  came  the  task  and  the  glory  of  repelling 
it  would  be  theirs.  The  people  and  army  corps 
of  Lorraine  were  therefore  something  apart  ; 
they  occupied  much  the  same  position  in  relation 
to  the  rest  of  the  army  as  the  British  frontier 
force  in  India  to  our  own  Regular  Army. 
Now  they  were  to  be  put  to  the  test.  On  them 
depended  the  fate  not  only  of  Nancy  and  of 
Toul,  but  in  aU  probability  of  the  whole  of  the 
Verdun-Toul  line  of  fortresses.  The  Germans 
were  already  maldng  desperate  efforts  to 
approach  and  if  possible  burst  through  th?.i/ 
line,    but   for   the   time   being  it   was   Nancy, 


GENERAL    BELIN, 

One  of  General  JoflFre's  principal  executive 

officers. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


411 


DINNER    TIME. 

French  officer  testing  soup  prepared  for  the  men 
under  his  command. 

Inset  :  Taking  food  to  the  trenches. 

or  rather  the  entrenched  positions  in  front  of  it, 
which  took  up  most  of  their  energy.  It  was 
perhaps  fortimate  for  the  French  that  it  was  a 
field  army  and  not  a  fortress  with  which  their 
enemy  had  to  deal  at  this  particular  point. 
This  was  the  conclusion  arrived  at  on  the  spot 
by  the  special  correspondent  of  The  Times  on 
the  French  eastern  frontier  : 

When  Bismarck  interfered  in  1874  to  prevent  the  con- 
struction of  fortifications  ronnd  the  town  by  threatening 
to  renew  the  war  of  1870  he  was,  without  knowing  it, 
working  against  the  interest  of  his  country  rather  than 
for  it.  If  Nancy  had  been  encircled  by  a  ring  of  stereo- 
typed forts  it  is  almost  a  certainty  that  the  French 
would  have  fallen  back  on  the  protection  of  their  guns, 
and  that  tlie  town  would  have  been  taken  long  ago. 
It  is  because  Nanny  did  not,  because  it  could  not,  put 
its  trust  in  forts  that  the  German  ad\'ance  has  been 
checked  (and  will  perhaps  be  checkmated)  at  this  one 
point  only  on  the  whole  line. 

Further  south  the  enemy  have  crossed  the  difficult 
barrier  of  the  Vosges  mountains,  and  by  the  Col  de 
Sainte  Marie,  the  Col  du  Bonhomme  and  the  Col  du 
Donon  and  other  passes  have  penetrated  some  little 
distance  into  France.  To  the  north  the  whole  of  the 
rest  of  their  line  has  swung  across  Belgium  and  France 
to  Compiegne  and  then  part  of  the  way  back  again, 
like    a    bar  (though  never  a  straight  nor  a  rigid  bar), 


hini^ed  to  a  fixed  point.  And  the  immovable  pivot 
which  tlii-ee  months'  eon-tant  sapping  on  three  sides 
has  not  been  able  to  undeiinine  is  the  open  and  unpro- 
tected town  of  Nancy.  That  is  one  of  the  wonders  and 
one  of  the  chief  lessons  of  tlie  war. 

Before,  however,  the  wonder  was  finally 
accomplished  there  was  for  the  French  a  period 
of  heroic  fighting  and  acute  suspense  to  go 
through.  The  quiet  and  confident  way  in 
which  the  people  of  Lorraine  faced  the  anxiety 
was  another  of  the  war's  marvels.  Their 
town  was  attacked  (and  the  nearest  phase  of 
the  attack  was  kept  up  for  three  weeks)  from 


412 


THi'J    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


foiir  directions  at  once.  Yet  they  never  lost 
heart,  and  even  when  its  streets  and  barracks 
were  thronged  with  wretched  refugees,  and 
its  hospitals  with  wounded  from  the  burnt  and 
ruined  villages  and  blood-drenched  battle- 
fields only  a  few  miles  off,  the  life  of  the  place 
went  on  with  very  little  change.  The  inhabi- 
tants of  the  town,  like  the  army  in  front  of  it, 
felt  that  they  stood  at  the  outposts  of  the  State 
and  that  they  owed  a  duty  to  France.  They 
had  at  their  head  two  exceptional  men,  who 
were  able  to  work  together  with  perfect 
unanimity.  Monsieur  Leon  Mirman  (once 
a  chasseur-a-pied  and  "  soldat-depute "  for 
Reims)  had  resigned  his  position  as  Directeur  de 
I'Assistance  Publique  at  Paris  in  order  to  take 
up  at  Nancy  the  anxious  and  sometimes 
dangerous  office  of  Prefect  of  Meurthe  et 
Moselle.  Monsieur  Simon,  whose  appointment 
as  Mayor  also  dated  from  the  beginning  of 
the  war,  was  unanimously  chosen  by  his 
municipal    colleagues    as    the    fittest    man    for 


the  post  in  the  unexampled  emergency.  It 
was  largely  due  to  the  personal  example  of 
these  two  men  and  the  official  and  emergency 
staffs  which  they  gathered  round  them  that  the 
population  kept  its  head  and  it^  bonne  humeur 
all  through  the  difficult  and  trying  days  when 
the  enemy  stood  at  its  gates.  At  night,  jus 
at  Verdun,  Commercy,  Toul,  Epinal,  and 
Belfort,  very  few  people  were  to  be  seen 
abroad  in  the  darkened  streets.  But  by  day, 
except  for  the  convoys  of  prisoners,  of  wounded, 
and  of  ravilaillemcnt,  the  constant  going  and 
coming  of  long  columns  of  troops,  and  the 
never-ceasing  sound  of  the  guns,  there  was  httle 
to  show  that  teclinically  the  town  was  in  a 
state  of  siege.  Everyone  had  his  or  her  work 
to  do  (Madame  Mirman,  like  her  husband,  was 
untiring  in  the  organization  of  relief  for  the 
refugees  and  the  wounded),  everyone  did  it 
willingly  and  even  cheerfully,  and  everjom- 
refused  to  despair  of  the  Republic. 

Meanwhile  the  attack  was  in  full  swing. 
It  came,  after  the  retreat  from  Morhange,  by 
Pont-a-Mousson  to  the  north,  Chateau-Salins 
to  the  north-east,  Cirey  to  the  east,  and  St. 
Die  to  the  south-east.  The  routes  chosen 
by  the  Germans  were  naturally  the  easiest  for 
reaching  their  objective.  From  St.  Die  along 
the  wide  valleys  of  the  Mei'j-the  and  its  tributary 
the  Mortagne ;  from  Cirey  past  Luneville 
down  another  Meurthe  tributary,  the  Vezouse  ; 
from  Chateau-Salins  by  the  main  road  across 
the  frontier  between  the  forests  of  Champenoux 
and  St.  Paul ;  and  from  Metz  southwards  past 
Pont-a-Mousson  up  the  chamiel  of  the  Moselle 


A    STREET    IN    VITREMONT    BUKNT    BY    THE    GERMANS. 
Monsieur  Leon  Mirman,  Prefet  of  the  Meurthe  and  Moselle  Department  (inset).     On  the  right  of 

picture  M.  Mirman  is  talking  to  a  homeless  villager. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


413 


LOOKING    FOR    THE    ENEMY. 

Chasseurs  scouting  along  a  road. 


and  the  Meurthe,  the  ways  into  Nancy  are 
straightforward  and  the  ground  for  the  most 
part  flat  and  unbroken.  But,  besides  the 
villages  and  towns  by  which  they  pass  (most 
of  which  were  used  by  the  French  in  delaying 
the  advance  of  the  Bavarian  troops),  there 
is,  at  irregular  intervals  between  them,  a 
ring-fence  of  wooded  heights,  proudly  known 
as. the  Grand  Couronne  of  Nancy,  which  served 
as  the  main  hne  of  the  defence.  To  the  north 
these  hills  rise  to  a  height  of  about  1,000  feet 
on  each  side  of  the  Meurthe  and  encircle  Nancy 
from  the  south,  along  the  side  away  from  the 
frontier,  rovind  to  a  point  a  little  east  of  north. 
Through  the  remaining  segment  of  the  circle 
of  which  the  town  is  the  centre,  towards  the 
frontier  on  the  east  and  south-east,  a  wide 
plain  rises  gently  to  the  horizon  five  miles 
away,  with  more  hills  and  forests  springing 
out  of  it.  The  most  important  of  these  land- 
marks are  the  Plateau  of  Amance,  six  miles 
north-east  of  the  town,  with  the  forests  of 
Champenoux  and  St.  Paul  just  beyond  it,  north 
and  south  of  the  Chateau-Salins  road,  and 
secondly,  more  to  the  east,  in  the  direction  of 
Luneville  and  Cirey,  the  forests  of  Vitrimont 
and  Parroy. 

At  the  beginning  of  August,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  opposing  forces  were  making  several  for- 
ward movements  in  opposite  directions,  each  in 


front  of  one  of  the  rival  fortresses  of  Verdun  and 
]\Ietz,  Toul  and  Saarburg,  Epinal  and  Strass- 
burg,  the  garrison  armies  of  which,  before  the 
^\  ar  began,  were  waiting  like  kennelled  watch- 
dogs, ready  once  they  were  let  loose  to  fly  at 
one  another's  throats.  By  the  fourth  week  of 
the  month,  except  in  Alsace,  all  these  cross- 
cvu-rents  were  setting  in  the  same  direction, 
converging  steadily  on  Luneville  and  Nancy 
(wliich  is  only  ten  miles  from  the  frontier),  as 
the  French  fell  back  before  the  pursuing  Ger- 
mans. Once  the  retreat  had  begun  in  the  north 
the  result  was  felt  all  along  the  line.  In  the 
centre  the  Germans  reoccupied  Cirey  and 
Badonviller,  from  which  they  had  fallen  back 
earlier  in  the  month,  and  occupied  Blamont, 
between  Cirey  and  Limeville.  Lower  down 
their  second  army  took  possession  of  St.  Die, 
Raon  I'Etape,  and  other  small  towns  between 
Epinal  and  the  Vosges,  and  General  Dubail 
with  the  First  French  Army  gradually  retired 
westwards,  which  had  the  effect  of  straightening 
the  French  line.  There  %^as  some  very  severe 
fighting  at  the  Col  du  Chipotte  (where  the 
losses  on  both  sides  were  exceedingly  heavy) 
and  other  places  in  the  spurs  of  the  Vosges  at 
the  end  of  August  and  the  beginning  of  Sep- 
tember, in  which  the  French  behaved  with  great 
gallantry  and  were  not  content  with  acting  on 
the  defensive.     But  the  general  result  was  tliat 

37—3 


414 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


the  Germans,  though  they  could  never  get  as 
far  west  as  Epinal,  at  first  ahvays  lield  the 
upper  hand. 

Farther  north,  as  the  French  fell  back  from 
Saarburg  and  Morhange,  they  rallied  first  at  a 
position  marked  by  the  river  Meurthe  to  the 
south  of  Luneville  and  the  Marne  canal  and 
the  bovmdary  river,  the  Seille,  above  it,  and 
tlien  farther  west  along  a  front  that  began  in 
the  valley  of  the  Mortagne  and  extended  in  the 
same  line  in  the  direction  of  Champenoux. 
Beyond  that  line,  which  practically  coincides 
with  the  Grand  Couronne  of  Nancy,  the  Germans 


FRENCH    COLONIAL. 
An  officer  taking  observations. 

never  advanced.  The  position  was  well  chosen. 
Beginning  in  the  north  at  Mount  Toulon, 
it  was  based  first  on  the  heights  of  Mont 
St.  Jean,  La  Rochette,  and  Amance  (the 
rock  on  which  the  attack  broke),  then  pro- 
tected by  the  forests  of  Chanapenoux,  St  Paul, 
and  Crevic,  and  finally  by  the  forest  of  Vitrimont, 
and  a  short  stretch  of  the  Mortagne.  The  most 
important  of  the  towns  which  stood  between  it 
and  the  frontier  was  Luneville,  which  the 
Germans  entered  without  resistance  on  August 
22,  and  held  till  September  12.  It  was  de- 
liberately and  wisely  sacrificed  by  the  French 


m  order  to  gain  the  advantage  of  the  stronger 
position  behind  it.  The  first  two  army  corps 
engaged  in  the  invasion  of  Lorraine  started 
from  Strassburg  and,  entering  France 
by  the  upper  pa.sses  of  the  Vosges  and 
between  Cirey  and  Baccarat,  advanced  along 
the  three  river  valleys  on  Luneville  and  the 
group  of  villages  siurounding  it.  All  of  these 
villages  suffered  severely  from  the  shells  of 
both  sides  and  the  still  more  destructive 
incendiarism  of  the  Germans,  especially  Ger- 
beviller  and  Badonviller,  in  each  of  which  the 
French  put  up  a  stiff  fight.  Badonviller,  three 
times  occupied  by  the  enemy,  was  the  scene  of 
nearly  continuous  fighting  for  the  first  month 
of  the  war.  The  second  arrival  of  the  Germans 
on  August  23  was  described  as  follows  by  one  of 
the  special  correspondents  of  The  Times  : 

At  8  in  the  morning  the  French  hurriedly  evacuated 
Badonviller  and  took  up  a  position  at  Pexonnes,  about 
two  miles  to  the  rear,  and  the  Germans,  after  a  desiiltory 
bombardment,  which  went  on  all  day,  marched  in  at 
6  in  the  evening.  For  the  next  few  hours  there  wa.s 
furious  fighting  in  and  around  the  town  between  the 
Chasseurs  Alpins  and  the  Chasseurs  d'Afriqne  on  the 
one  side  and  on  the  other  the  Bavarians,  the  I..andwehr, 
the  162nd  Regiment  of  Strassburg,  and  the  regiment 
of  the  notorious  Lieutenant  Von  Forstner  (since  reported 
killed),  the  99th  of  Zabcrn.  The  Germans,  as  soon  as 
they  entered  the  town,  began  ordering  the  terrified 
inhabitants  to  come  out  of  the  cellars  in  which  they  had 
taken  refuge,  when  suddenly  they  were  interrupted  by  a 
furious  counter-attack  of  the  Chasseurs,  and  driven  out 
of  the  town  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet.  Once  more 
the  natives  shiit  them.selves  up  in  the  cellars  and  listened 
panic-stricken  to  the  noise  and  confusion  of  the  struggle 
overhead.  One  comfort  they  had  in  their  alarm.  All 
the  time,  above  the  din  of  the  fighting,  they  heard  the 
stirring  notes  of  the  French  bugles  sounding  the  charge, 
and  all  the  time  the  voices  of  the  French  soldiers  singing, 
as  they  charged,  the  famous  Sidi-'Brahim  bugle  march  : 

Pan  !     Pan  !     L'Arbi  ! 

Los  Chacals  sont  par  ici  ! 

Mais  plus  haut  c'est  las  Turcos  ! 

Little  by  little,  as  the  Germans  retreated,  the  sounds 
died  away  in  the  distance,  and  then  suddenly  began 
again  as  the  Chasseurs,  still  chanting  the  Sidi-'Brahim, 
marched  back  through  the  town  and  retired  to  their 
position  at  Pexonnes.  Then  once  more  the  Gernianf, 
and  at  last  the  silence  of  the  night. 

The  church  .  .  .  was  the  part  of  the  town  that 
suffered  most  from  the  bombardment.  Dome  and  roof 
have  both  been  entirely  shot  away  ;  shattered  fragments 
of  the  pillars  in  front  of  the  church  and  the  shapeles.* 
remains  of  the  four  walls  are  all  that  is  left.  Except  for 
one  thing — a  statue  of  Joan  of  Arc,  with  one  arm  broken 
off  short  at  the  shoulder,  standing  erect  and  serene  on 
its  pedestal,  surrounded  by  the  piles  of  stone  and  mortar 
and  timber  and  glass  that  litter  the  floor  of  the  roofless 
nave.  ...  In  the  rest  of  the  town  comparatively  little 
damage  has  been  done  by  the  shells.  And  there  is  this 
curious  fact  to  note,  that  the  bombardment  which  did 
the  mischief  took  place  while  the  town  was  actually 
occupied  by  German  troops.  They  were  .simply  ordered 
to  keep  out  of  the  range  of  the  fire,  which  meant  away 
from  the  neighbourhood  of  the  church.  These  troops — 
they  were  Bavarians — completed  the  work  of  destruction 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


415 


"  LA    TRICOTEUSE,"    THE    HEAVY    FRENCH    120  MM.    GUN. 
A  powerful  gun  of  the   French  Heavy  Artillery  concealed  from   the  enemy's  observation. 


416 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


SEEKING    A    FALLEN    COMRADE    ON    THE    BATTLEFIELD. 
A  French  soldier  searching  for  a  friend  after  an  attack  on  a  German  trench. 


by  b'lrning  tVie  quarter  of  the  town  nearest  to  the 
GkTniau  frontier,  some  30  houses  in  all,  besides  pillaging 
many  others.  They  also  phot  12  of  the  inliabitants, 
including  jMadame  Benoit,  the  wife  of  the  heroic  mayor, 
another  woman  and  the  child  she  was  holding  in  her 
arms,  and  an  old  man  of  78,  who  was  sitting  peacefully 
by  hi^  window. 

But  it  was  at  Gerbeviller,  a  small  town  about 
five  miles  south  of  Luneville,  that  the  systematic 
German  policy  of  terrorising  the  population 
by  shooting  civilians  and  burning  their  houses 
reached  its  height.  According  to  the  accoimt 
given  by  the  same  correspondent,  less  than 
ten  houses  out  of  more  than  460  remained 
habitable  after  the  Germans  were  finally  driven 
from  the  town.  On  the  day  on  which  they 
first  attacked  it  it  was  defended  with  splendid 
courage  by  a  body  of  60  or  70  Chasseiu-s 
against  a  force  of  three  or  four  thousand. 
When  they  were  at  length  forced  to  retire,  a 
few  of  their  number  who  got  separated  from 
the  rest  hid  till  nightfall  in  a  cellar,  and,  as 
they  were  making  their  escape,  shot  a  sentry 
who  had  been  jjosted  at  the  lower  end  of  the 
town.  By  this  time  the  place  was  full  of 
German  troops.  Roused  to  fury  by  the 
heroic  resistance  which  had  kept  them  so  long 
at  bay,  and  assuming,  without  any  justification, 
that  tlie  sentry  had  been  killed  by  a  non- 
combatant,  they  set  to  work  to  wreak  their 
vengeance  on  tlie  unfortunate  to\\-n,  of  wliich 
they  I«>ft  practically  nothing  standing  except 
a  melancholy  desolation  of  blackened  and 
tottering  walls.  The  autliors  of  the  outrage 
were  eventually  driven  out  by  the  French 
artillery.  But  it  was  not  the  two  bombard- 
ments suffered  by  the  to%An  that  did  the  mis- 
cliief .  It  was  caused  by  deliberate  incendiarism, 
carried  out  by  petrol,  and  at  least  two  different 
kinds  of  firelighters,  which  the  soldiers  had 
ready   in   their  haversacks.     One   by   one   the 


churches  and  houses  were  set  on  fire  and  burned, 
in  many  cases  burying  in  their  ruins  the  charred 
bodies  of  the  inhabitants  in  hiding  in  the 
cellars.  Nor  were  these  the  only  victims  of  the 
insensate  lust  for  blood  of  the  German  soldiery. 
The  French  Government  have  in  their  posses- 
sion a  photograjah  taken  bj'  a  responsible 
official  of  m'ne  white-headed  old  men,  whose 
dead  bodies  were  found  after  the  German  with- 
drawal, lying  in  a  field  close  to  the  to%vn.  Their 
hands  were  bound  together,  their  trousers  had 
been  imbuttoned,  and  were  clinging  rottnd  their 
knees,  either  as  a  cruel  insult,  or  else — the 
irony  of  it — to  prevent  them  from  running 
away,  and  they  had  been  shot  down  in  cold 
blood.  The  Avretched  inhabitants,  when  they 
were  able  to  come  back  to  gaze  sadly  at  the 
crumbling  heaps  of  stone  that  had  once  been 
their  homes,  said  that  many  more  of  their 
acquaintances  and  relations  had  been  "judici- 
ally murdered  "  in  the  same  ^va}-.  The  one 
bright  spot  in  the  story  of  the  nightmare  of 
barbarism  was  the  fuie  coiu-age  of  Sceur  Julie, 
the  brave  religieuse  who,  vnXh.  other  sisters  of 
her  order,  stuck  to  her  post  through  all  the 
horrors  of  the  double  bombardment  and  the 
incendiary  fires,  and  nursed  the  wounded  of 
both  sides.  She  richlj-  deserved  the  decoration 
of  the  cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honour  which  she 
received  from  the  hand  of  the  President  of  the 
Republic. 

As  for  the  Germans,  almost  everywhere 
that  ihey  went  in  this  part  of  France  at 
Nomeny,  at  Baccarat,  at  Remereville,  and 
scores  of  other  towais  and  \illages  in  Lorraine, 
the  Vosges  and  the  Woevre,  endless  stories 
were  told  by  responsible  level-headed  eye- 
witnesses, not  only  of  indiscriminate  house- 
burnings  (the  evidence  of  which  remained 
for  aU  the  world  to  see),  but  of  women  and 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


417 


•children,  shot  Uke  rabbits  at  their  windows  or 
in  the  streets,  for  the  mere  pleasure  of  killing, 
■of  horrible  rapes,  and  of  disgusting  bestialities. 
There  were,  of  course,  many  men  and  many 
officers  who  had  no  hand  in  these  atrocious 
acts.  In  some  cases  their  occupation 
of  conquered  villages  and  towns  was  free 
from  the  stain  of  them  ;  in  others  the  stories 
told  were  no  doubt  untrue  or  exaggerated. 
In  Luneville,  for  instance,  though  they  wantonJy 
burnt  down  about  forty  houses  in  one  of  the 
subxirbs,  shot  some  of  the  inhabitants  (more 
probably  from  nervousness  than  brutality),  and 
helped  themselves  freely  to  their  belongings, 
the  record  of  their  three  weeks'  stay,  during 
part  of  which  they  were  being  hotly  bom- 
barded by  the  French,  was  not  for  them  a 
particularly  black  one.  It  is  true  that  the 
fact  that  the  town  got  off  comparatively  lightly 
was  chiefly  due  to  the  firm  and  courageous  and 
dignified  conduct  of  M.  Minier,  the  sous-prefet, 
M.  Keller,  the  mayor,  and  M.  Mequillet,  the 
-deputy  of  the  town,  who,  sometimes  at  the  risk 
of  their  own  lives,  boldly  stood  up  to  the  Ger- 
nnan  military  authorities,  and  at  the  same  time 
kept  a  hold  over  their  fellow  citizens.  But  to 
rank  the  Germans'  treatment  of  Luneville  as 
■one  of  their  minor  misdoings  is  enough  in  itself 
to  expose  the  gravity  of  the  case  against  them. 
After  making  all  reasonable  allowances,  far 
more  than  enough  evidence  remains  to  convict 
the   Bavarian  and   Prussian  troops  which   in- 


vaded the  east  of  France  of  callous  cruelties 
and  acts  of  degraded  grossness  which,  except 
in  rare  instances,  ought  to  have  been  imheard 
of  in  the  national  army  of  a  modern  civilized 
State.  The  names  of  Gerbeviller  and  Nomeny 
were  blots  that  could  not  soon  nor  easily  be 
wiped  out  from  the  escutcheon  of  German 
"  Kultur."  In  Eastern  France  no  less  than  in 
Belgium,  the  campaign  proved  to  demonstration 
the  poisonous  influence  of  the  German  teaching 
that  in  war  might  must  be  right.  It  had  resulted 
in  a  general  lowering  of  the  ethical  and  moral 
standard  of  the  German  people  and  army — even 
as  compared  with  1870 — and  by  suppressing  the 
finer  impulses  of  human  nature  had  brought  to 
the  surface  its  more  cruel  and  brutal  instincts. 

The  great  final  fight  for  the  possession  of 
Nancy  was  now  definitely  staged.  The  two 
first  invading  armies  had  made  good  as  far  as 
Luneville.  The  Third,  and  main  army,  which 
also  consisted  of  Bavarians,  with  more  and 
heavier  guns,  and  some  Prussian  cavalry  in 
the  shape  of  Uhlans, and  the  White  Cuirassiers 
of  the  Guard,  marched  from  Chateau- Salins 
and  engaged  in  a  violent  series  of  conflicts 
with  the  French  in  and  about  a  group  of  villages 
round  the  forest  of  Champenoux.  At  the  same 
time  part  of  the  Army  of  Metz,  which  began  by 
marching  westwards  towards  Verdun,  wheeled 
round  facing  south,  between  the  Meuse  and  the 
Moselle,  with  its  left  resting  on  Pont-a-Mousson. 
and  joined  in  the  attack  on  the  Lorraine  capital. 


AFTER    A    BATTLE. 
Dead  German  soldiers  left  on  the  battlefield  after  a  French  charge. 


■lis 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE     WAR. 


The  Genuan  plans  had  so  lar  succeeded 
that  they  were  now  nearly  in  a  position  to 
advance  from  two  directions  at  once  on  the 
plateau  of  Amance,  the  hill  on  which  General 
de  Castelnau  had  concentrated  the  bulk  of 
his  artillery.  Before  they  could  cooperate 
in  this  attempt  with  the  armies  coming  from 
Saarburg  and  Strassburg,  the  Northern  or  Metz 
Army,  after  occupying  Nomeny  on  August  20, 
had  to  take  the  village  of  Ste.  Genevieve,  about 
ten  miles  north-west  of  Amance,  where  a 
moderately  strong  French  force  under  General 
Foch  had  been  posted.  They  started  from 
Pont-a-Mousson  on  August  22  full  of  enthusiasm 
with  confident  cries  of  "  Ste.  Genevieve  to- 
night :  to-morrow  Nancy  1 "  Three  miles 
up  the  river  they  left  the  main  road  at  Loisy  to 
climb  the  hill  to  Ste.  Genevieve,  and  foimd 
themselves   confronted    by   the   wire   entangle- 


ments which  the  French  had  erected  about 
tliree-quarters  of  a  mile  in  front  of  and  to  the 
left  of  their  trenches.  This  obliged  them  to 
make  the  attack  from  their  own  left  front,  and 
they  decided  to  prepare  the  way  with  field 
guns  and  some  heavier  artillery,  which,  in 
the  course  of  the  next  75  hours,  poured  into 
Ste.  Genevieve  over  4,000  shells.  The  French 
had  only  one  regiment  of  infantrj-  in  the  village 
(about  3,000  men  against  12,000),  but  they 
v\  ere  well  sheltered  in  their  trenches,  and  only 
lost  three  killed  and  soine  20  wounded  in  the 
course  of  the  bombardment.  The  batteries 
in  support  were  so  well  hidden  that  the  enemy's 
aeroplanes  failed  to  locate  them,  and  they 
allowed  the  Germans  to  waste  their  ammunition 
without  firing  a  shot  in  return.  They  knew 
that  the  position  was  critical  and  that  the  safety 
of  Nancy  in  all  probability  depended  on  their 
success.  The  brilliant  fight  that  followed  wa.s 
described  as  follows  by  the  special  correspondent 
of  The  Times  : 

On  the  evening  of  the  24tli  the  German  comniandor, 
deceived  by  their  silence  and  imagining  that  the  infantry 
force  had  been  crushed  by  the  bombardment,  ga\  e  the 
order  to  attack,  and  his  formidable  little  army,  still 
covered  by  the  fire  of  its  artillery,  advanced  on  Ste.  (^ne- 
vieve  in  massed  columns.  Then  at  last,  when  they  had 
come  to  a  convenient  rnncre,   the   7.5's  opened   on  their 


WINE    CASKS    AS    A    BARRICADE. 
Scene  in  the  streets  of  Nomeny,   Eastern  France.     Inset :   French  troops  in  the  trenches. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF    THE    WAB. 


419 


THE    DEUTSGHES    THOR,    METZ, 
Known  to  the  French  of  the  City  as  La  Porte  des  Allemands. 


closely-formed  rank?.  Most  of  the  work  fell  on  one 
particular  battery  from  Toul,  as  the  others  were  so 
placed  that  they  could  not  fire  effectively  without 
endangering  their  own  infantrj-.  For  three  hours  they 
pounded  the  Germans,  cutting  them  up  badly,  and  then, 
when  he  had  fired  his  last  shell,  the  captain  of  the 
battery  ordered  his  men  to  fix  bayonets  and  join  the 
infantry  (the  314th  Regiment)  in  a  last  effort 
to  check  the  assault,  to  which  the  Germans  at 
once  advanced,  crouching  low  as  they  came  on  up 
the  slope. 

The  order  had  been  given  to  the  infantry  to  let  them 
got  within  300  yards.  When  they  reached  that  distance 
the  French  officers  shouted  at  the  top  of  their  voices 
the  command  which,  of  all  others,  the  Germans  dislike, 
''  En  avant  a  la  bai'onnette."  But  the  infantry  had  also 
been  warned  that,  on  hearing  this  word  of  command, 
instead  of  charging  they  were  to  stay  in  the  trenches 
and  fire  a  succession  of  volleys.  It  was  a  neat  idea,  and 
it  came  off.  Hearing  the  order  and  the  bugle  sounding 
the  charge,  the  German  front  ranks  quickly  rose  from 
their  crouching  position  and  hurriedly  fixed  bayonets 
to  repel  the  attack.  The  first  volley  caught  them  just 
as  they  reached  the  wire  entanglements  in  front  of  the 
trenches,  and  mowed  them  do«^  in  hundreds.  They 
fell  in  such  dense  masses  that  the  uien  who  came  on 
from  behind  climbed  over  their  bodies  and  the  first  row 
of  entanglements  at  the  same  time.  But  they  could  get 
no  farther.  The  French  Lebols  wiped  them  out,  and 
the  only  result  of  their  fine  courage — for  they  came  onto 
the  assault  four  separate  times — was  that  they  left  4,000 
dead  in  front  of  those  murderous  trenches.  Then, 
almost  at  nightfall,  they  gave  up  the  attempt,  and  fell 
back  on  Atton,  the  village  in  front  of  Pont-i-Mousson, 
through  which  they  had  passed  bo  cheerfully  three 
days  before  with  their  cries  of  "  Nancy  domain."  For 
the  moment  their  demoralization  was  complete.  In 
the  darkness  some  of  them  lost  their  way,  and  stumbling 
on  the  wire  entanglements  in  front  of  Loisy  foil  into  the 
river  and  were  drowned.  The  survivors,  when  they 
reached  Atton,  christened  Ste.  Goiievi6ve  "  The  Hole  of 
Death." 

The  attack  on  Amance  and  Nancy  from  tJio 

east  was  a  more  protracted  affair,  but  it  was 


equally  unsuccessful.  At  first  the  struggle 
was  most  severe  along  the  French  right,  on 
the  Nancy  side  of  Lun^ville  (which  is  15  miles 
from  the  Lorraine  capital),  round  Haraucourt, 
Rosieres,  and  Dombasle,  the  last  of  which  places 
was  occupied  by  the  Germans  on  August  22, 
though  they  were  quickly  driven  out  and  retired 
on  the  heights  and  woods  of  Crevic.  Next  day 
there  was  the  same  sort  of  give-and-take  fighting 
along  the  low  hills  north  of  the  Dombasle- 
Lun6ville  road,  and  at  Leomont,  Crevic  and 
Vitrimont,  where  thousands  of  German  dead 
were  left  in  the  forest.  On  the  25th,  between 
Courbesseau  and  Drouville,  a  strong  German 
position  was  attacked  by  five  French  infantry 
regiments.  Owing,  however,  to  insufficient 
support  by  their  artillery,  they  suffered 
severely.  One  regiment  lost  65  per  cent,  of 
its  men  killed  and  wovmded,  and  for  the  time 
being  the  attack  failed.  But  the  spirit  of 
the  whole  army  remained  excellent.  During 
that  long  drawn  out  fortnight  of  fierce  charge 
and  counter-charge,  in  the  fields  and  forests, 
and  the  streets  of  the  ruined  and  smoking 
villages,  the  fighting  was  so  continuous  that 
sometimes  even  to  pick  up  the  dead  and 
wounded  was  impossible.  There  were  places, 
too,  where  the  Germans,  hidden  in  the  v\  oods, 
pcsrsistently  fired  on  any  of  the  wounded  who 
moved  a  limb  and  anyone  who  went  to  their 
rescue  even  after  the  engagements  had  stopped. 
Some  of  th(>m  lay  and  suffered,  without  food 


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Font^SfPJ^  ^.^^_ 


421 


iE  CHAMPAGNE  AND  THE  ARGONNE. 


422 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


or  drink,  for  as  much  as  five  days.  But  even 
they,  or  those  of  them  who  survived  tlie  ordeal, 
only  asked  to  be  cured  of  their  wounds  that  they 
might  go  out  and  fight  again.  They  had  but 
one  thought — to  defend  Lorraine  and  avenge  its 
sufferings. 

Further  north  along  the  line  a  series  of 
violent  engagements  at  Remereville,  Erbeviller, 
and  other  places  round  the  forests  of  Cham- 
penoux  and  St.  Paul,  culminated  in  a 
sustained  attack  on  the  plateau  of  Amance. 
The  bombardment  lasted  for  more  than  a  week, 
night  and  day.  Before  it  began,  on  August  30 
and  31,  there  was  a  trying  period  of  suspense 
for  the  men  who  were  working  the  guns  on 


AERIAL    WARFARE. 

Machine  that  winds  up  the  rope  of  the 
French  captive  balloon. 


the  top  of  the  plateau.  They  were  surrounded 
by  a  thick  fog.  They  had  a  feeling  that 
the  enemy  were  near,  but  could  see 
nothing.  All  that  they  could  do  was  to 
work  at  the  entrencliments  which  they  had 
been  constructing  since  their  arrival  from 
Toul  and  to  shell  the  roads  likely  to  be  used 
by  the  enemy. 

Meanwhile,  as  they  suspected,  the  Germans 
were  placing  their  heavy  guns  in  position. 
\Vhen  the  fog  had  cleared  away  German  airmen 
flew  over  the  plateau  at  a  great  height,  and 
once  they  had  made  out  the  position  of  the 
French  artillery  their  gunners  had  little  rest. 
Fotir  batteries  opened  fire  uj^on  them,  and  the 
shells  fell  thick  and  fast,  mth  a  deafening  din. 
At  one  time  the  fire  was  so  severe  that  the 
drivers  and  most  of  the  men  serving  the  guns 
were  ordered  to  retire  to  the  village  behind  the 


hill.  But  here  as  well  they  were  quickly  de- 
tected by  the  enemy  war  planes  and  captive  bal- 
loons, and  followed  by  a  rain  of  shells  which  .sent 
the  villagers  scuttling  to  their  cellars  or  flying 
over  the  fields.  After  a  time  the  French  artil- 
lery men  made  a  dash  for  the  plateau  through  a 
storm  of  flame  and  iron  and  reached  the  trenches 
near  the  guns,  which  were  well  concealed  and 
had  not  been  touched.  Their  wounded  they 
were  obhged  to  take  into  the  trenches  with 
them.  The  fire  was  so  hot  that  it  was  out  of 
the  question  to  show  even  a  hand.  Tlien  at 
last  it  began  to  show  signs  of  slackening,  and 
the  battery  commanders  and  gun  layers,  who 
had  been  waiting  for  this  moment  in  the  little 
wood  on  the  plateau,  were  able  to  get  back  to 
their  pieces,  which  were  soon  once  more  in  full 
action. 

Up  to  September  8  the  battle  was  fought 
with  increasing  violence  all  along  the  25  niiles 
of  the  French  front,  which  at  its  nearest  point 
\\  as  within  about  six  miles  of  Nancy.  To  break 
through  that  Une  had  become  for  the  Germans 
a  matter  of  urgent  importance.  West  of 
Verdun  their  armies  were  being  steadily  pushed 
back  beyond  the  IVIame.  In  front  of  Amance 
one  of  their  divisions  had  been  heavily  defeated 
on  the  7th  in  the  forest  of  Champenoux.  On 
the  8th  they  braced  themselves  for  a  final  effort 
vmder  the  eye  of  the  Kaiser,  who  in  spite  of  the 
gravity  of  the  situation  on  the  Mame,  had 
journeyed  to  the  eastern  front  to  give  to  his 
armies  there  the  encouragement  of  his  presence 
and  authority.  If  he  had  been  able,  as  he 
probably  expected,  to  enter  Nancy  in  triumph 
at  the  head  of  liis  victorious  troops,  the  moral 
effect  both  in  France  and  in  Germany  would 
have  been  immense.  But  before  that  was 
possible  the  heights  of  Amance  must  be  stormed. 
When  the  order  for  the  assault  was  given  the 
Germans  came  out  of  the  woods  a  mile  away, 
and  headed  by  their  fifes  and  drums,  as  if  they 
were  on  parade,  advanced  sr  lemnly  and 
pompously  to  the  attack  of  the  French  infantry 
positions  halfway  tip  the  east  side  of  the  liill. 
The  French  guns  were  silent.  There  was  no- 
tliing  to  show  whether  they  had  been  put  out 
of  action  or  were  onlj-  biding  their  time. 
Except  the  music  of  the  bands  there  was  not  a 
sound,  for  the  infantry  also  reser\-ed  their  fire 
till  the  enemy  were  within  200  yards.  Then 
suddenly,  with  loud  shouts  of  "  Vive  la  France," 
they  sprang  from  the  trenches  and  charged 
with  fixed  bayonets.  The  two  lines  met  with 
a  violent  shock,  and  the  German  ranks  broke. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAE. 


423 


As  they  fled  to  the  shelter  of  the  forest  the 
75's  came  into  action,  and  firing  at  short  range, 
mowed  theiw  down  rank  by  rank.  But  the 
Kaiser  was  there  to  inspire  them.  The  work 
that  he  had  given  them  to  do  was  still  undone, 
and  they  fought  on  with  wonderful  coiu-age 
and  tenacity.  Six  times  they  advanced  to  the 
attack,  and  six  times  they  were  driven  back 
again  to  the  woods.  At  some  places  at  the  foot 
of  that  deadly  hill  the  bodies  were  piled  up 
five  or  six  feet  high,  and  when  the  survivors 
took  shelter  behind  the  heaps  of  dead  and 
wounded  the  75's  still  raked  them  through  and 
through,'  smothering  dead  and  Uving  in  a 
horrible  mire  of  flesh  and  blood,  wlaile  the 
155's,  firing  over  the  heads  of  the  front  ranks, 
finished  off  the  work  farther  back  in  the  forest. 
The  German  losses  were  enormous.  Thousands 
of  their  dead  were  left  lying  on  the  plain,  and 
in  the  evening  they  asked  and  were  granted  a 
four  hours'  truce  to  bury  them.  It  was 
believed  by  the  French  that  they  took  advantage 
of  the  opportunity  to  place  in  position  near 
the  village  of  Cercenil  the  heavy  guns  which 
shelled  Nancy  on  the  night  of  September 
9,  They  might  have  saved  themselves  the 
trouble. 

The  bombardment,  which  should  have 
been  the  dramatic  finale  of  the  assault  on 
the  town,  was  instead  a  rather  feeble  anti- 
climax. It  began  at  about  half-past  eleven, 
when  most  of  the  inhabitants  were  in  bed.  A 
violent  storm  was  raging,  and  at  first  the  sound 


of  the  bursting  shells  was  mistaken  for  claps  of 
thunder,  till  everyone  was  roused  by  the  crash 
of  falling  masonry  and  the  roar  of  the  French 
guns  replying  to  the  attack,  which  they  com- 
pletely silenced  in  about  an  hour's  time. 
About  70  shells  were  fired,  kilUng  and  womiding 
a  few  civilians  and  damaging  a  certain  number 
of  houses.  As  a  military  manoeuvre  the 
bombardment  was  purposeless  and  futile,  and 
was  so  quickly  over  that  it  scarcely  had  the 
effect  of  alarming  the  population,  though  some 
of  the  more  timid  retired  the  next  day  to  towns 
further  removed  from  the  enemy  and  the 
frontier.  But  they  were  the  exception.  The 
great  majority  showed  the  same  confidence  in 
the  armies  of  General  de  Castelnau  and  General 
Dubail  as  their  Prefect,  whose  response  to  the 
bombardment  was  to  send  for  his  young  son 
and  daughters  to  come  and  live  with  him  and 
Madame  Mirman  at  Nancy.  The  watchwords 
of  the  whole  town  w^ere  courage  and  duty.  A 
good  example  of  the  prevailing  spirit  was  given 
by  one  of  the  very  few  Englislimen  who  were 
in  Nancy  at  the  time.  He  had  under  his  charge 
an  important  municipal  usine,  containing 
several  big  boilers,  which,  if  they  had  been 
burst  by  a  shell,  would  have  caused  widespread 
damage.  His  first  thought  when  the  firing 
began  was  to  empty  them,  and  though  liis 
works  and  the  streets  leading  to  them  were 
exactly  in  the  line  where  the  shells  were  falling, 
he  started  off  at  once  from  his  hotel,  went 
down  to  the  works,  and  did  what  was  necessary 


r 


FRENCH    BALLOON    AT    VALMY. 
Taking  observations  above  the  famous  old  mill. 


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42i 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAE. 


425 


to  make  the  boilers  liarmless.     That  was  typical 
of  the  waj'  in  wluch  almost  everyone  behaved, 
not  only  at  the  time  of  the  bombardment,  but 
during  and  after  the  formidable  and  prolonged 
efforts  of  the  enemy  to  invest  the  town.     At 
the  Prefectixre,  the  Mairie,  and  the  Chamber 
of  Commerce,  in  the  temporary  and  permanent 
hospitals  (where  the  regular  staffs  were  supple- 
mented by  devoted  bands  of  nurses  and  some 
of  the  foremost  civilian  doctors  of  France),  in 
all  the  various  organizations  which  busied  them- 
selves with  the  care  of  the  refugees  and  tlie 
poorer  inliabitants,  there  was  everywhere  the 
same     activity     and     the     same     undismayed 
resolution   and   devotion   to  duty.     The   local 
newspapers,  in  spite  of  the  galling  and  some- 
times absurd  restrictions  vmder  which  they  were 
placed,  always  maintained  a  high  standard  of 
patriotic  loyalty  to  the  one  supreme  cause  and 
of   unswerving   faith   in   its   sure   and   certain 
triumph.     Lorraine,   like  France,   had  become 
a  united  whole.     The  common  danger  and  tlie 
common  effort  had  put  an  end  to  the  dislike 
and  distrust   between   Church   and   Stat(>   and 
all  the  other  differences  of  French  political  and 
public  life.     The  armies  of  the  Eastern  frontier, 
which  shared  and  were  fortified  by  this  new- 
born spirit  of  luianimity,  had  their  minds  anr' 
their  hands  free  for  their  own  special  business. 
Tlie   victory   on   the   Marne   put   the   finishing- 
touch  to  the  work  that  they  had  done  and  the 
fight  that  they  had  so  gallantly  fought  before 
xsancy.     The   bombardment  of   the  town  was 
the  Germans'  parting  shot.     On  September  10 
they   evacuated    ront-a-Mousson,  and   on    the 
12th   Lunevillc,    Baccarat,    Raon-l'Etape,    and 
St.   Die  ;    there  was  a  general  advance  along 
the  wliole  French  front,  and  though  the  enemy 
still  held  a  bare  footing  on  the  edge  of  Lorraine 
and  in  the  department  of  the  Vosge^  the  effec- 
tive occupation  of  the  two  provinces  was  at  an 
end.     The   attack   on   the   Epinal-Verdim  line 
by  way  of  Nancy  had  completely  failed.     The 
Kaiser  and  his  men  had  looked  at  the  promised 
land  and  turned  their  backs  on  it. 

From  this  time  onwards  the  weight  of  the 
attack  was  shifted  from  the  soutliern  to  the 
northern  half  of  the  barrier  line  of  fortresses — 
between  Toul  and  Verdim — and  Verdun  took 
the  place  of  Nancy  as  the  main  German 
objective.  The  army  of  the  Crown  Prince  of 
Bavaria  occupied  a  front  extending  to  the 
north-west  from  the  frontier  opjiosite  Lunevillc, 
past  Thiaucourt  to  Consenvoye  on  the  Meuse 
ten  or  twelve  miles  north  of  Verdim,  where  its 


riglit  rested  on  the  left  of  the  Crown  Prince's 
army.  Its  left  w  ing  as  far  as  Thiaucoiu-t  was 
kept  busy  in  preventing  the  French  from 
advancing  on  Saarburg  and  Metz  ;  its  centre 
and  right  began  about  this  time  a  serious 
forward  movement  across  the  plain  of  the 
Woevre  to  the  wooded  heights  of  the  Meuse. 
It  had  two  objects  in  view  :  to  break  tlirough 
the  line  of  fortresses,  and  then  to  cross  the  river 
and  join  hands  with  the  right  wing  of  the  Crown 
Prince's  army  so  as  to  encircle  Verdun. 

The  fortress  of  Toul  is  almost  exactly  half 
way  between  Epinal  and  Verdun,  40  miles  from 
each.  In  the  lower  stretch  of  country,  the 
Trouee  de  Chamies,  there  are  no  forts,  and  the 
failure  of  the  Germans  to  break  through  in 
this  region  and  so  approach  Toul  from  the 
south  is  the  strongest  possible  testimony  to 
the  generalship  of  Dubail  and  the  magnificent 
resistance  of  the  Chasseiu-s-a-pied  and  75's  of 
the  First  Army.  Between  Toul  and  Verdun 
the  French  position  was  far  stronger.  East 
of  the  Meuse  the  wooded  Hauts  de  Meuse 
slope  gradually  down  to  the  river,  broken  at 
intervals  by  a  series  of  deep  and  precipitous 
ravineS;  guarded  by  forts,  ancient  and  modern. 
On  the  north  the  district  is  bounded  by  the 
Verdun-Metz  railway,  below  which  is  the  plain 
of  the  Woevre,  and  on  the  south  by  the  quick - 
flowing  Rupt  de  Mad,  which  runs  from  Com- 
mercy  on  the  Meuse  north-east  past  Thiaucourt 
to  Arnaville,  where  it  falls  into  the  Moselle  a  few 
miles  south  of  Metz.  All  along  the  INIevise, 
on  both  sides  of  the  stream,  there  is  a  chain 
of  forts.  South  of  the  Rupt  de  Mad,  between 
Commercy  and  the  Moselle,  the  forts  of  Liou- 
ville,  Gironville,  Jouy,  I^ucey,  Bruley  and  St. 
Michel  point  their  guns  to  the  east  and  north, 
towards  the  German  frontier.  Lower  down, 
on  the  right  bank  of  the  river,  the  guns  of  the 
Camp  des  Romains,  a  little  south  of  St.  Mihiel, 
and  of  Forts  Troy  on  and  Genicourt  to  the 
north  of  the  town,  are  trained  on  the  rixcr, 
ready  to  dispute  its  passage,  and  still  further 
north  are  the  southern  defences  of  Verdun, 
facing  up  the  channel  of  the  stream,  on 
the  fm'ther  or  left  bank  of  which  the  Fort 
des  Paroches.  between  Troyon  and  St.  Mihiel, 
faces  to  the  east.  This  was  the  formidable 
position  which  the  Germans  had  to  attack 
in  earnest,  as  a  riposte  to  the  battle  of  the 
IVIarne  and  their  repulse  in  front  of  Nancy. 

They  had  already,  from  September  8  to  13, 
hotly  bombarded  Troyon  (which  the  Crown 
Prince  had  also  made  a  rather  feeble  attempt 


4-26 


THE     TIMES    HI, STORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


WAITING    FOR    THE    ENEMY. 

French  troops  have  a  quiet  half-hour  in  the  trenches  on  the  banks  of  a  French  river. 


to  bombard  from  the  other  side  of  tlie  river). 
The  defence  of  the  fort  was  one  of  the  most 
gallant  feats  of  the  1914  camjjaign.  In  the 
first  three  hours  of  the  bombardment  the 
German  loO's  dropped  shells  into  it  at.the  rate 
of  one  a  minute,  firing  from  positions  in  the 
ravines  which  the  French  artillerymen  were 
unable  to  reach,  and  a  nimiber  of  French 
120's  and  90's  were  destroyed  by  an  explosion 
caused  by  a  "  Grosse  Marmite  "  (a  210  shell) 
which  burst  in  a  store  of  melinite.  On  tlie 
other  side  of  the  river  the  enemy  were  retreating 
on  the  Marne,  but  no  one  could  come  to  the 
lielp  of  Troyon.  Telephone  messages  from 
Verdun  told  the  Commandant  that  on  his 
resistance  depended  the  success  of  the  big 
movement  to  the  west,  and  that  he  must  at 
all  costs  hold  out.  At  the  same  time  the 
Commandant  of  the  fort  at  Paroches  tele- 
phoned that  his  guns  could  not  reach  the 
positions  of  the  Germans  who  were  bombarding 
Troyon.  There  was,  therefore,  notliing  left 
for  its  garrison  but  to  fight  on  as  best  it  could 
while  the  fort  gradually  crumbled  to  pieces 
round  them.  On  the  9th  two  German  officers 
and  a  bugler  arrived  and  three  tiines  called 
upon  it  to  siu-render.  The  Commandant 
proudly  refused.  "  Never,"'  he  said  ;  "  the 
fort  has  been  trusted  to  me  by  France,  and  I 
would   sooner   blow   it   up,"    and    finally   told 


them  to  decamp,  as  he  had  had  enough  of 
their  company,  though  he  wished  thein  au  revoir 
— at  Metz.  Then  the  Germans  brought  heavier 
guns  to  bear  on  the  place,  280"s  and  305's.  and 
during  the  night  their  infantry  advanced  and 
cut  the  wire  entanglements  in  front  of.  the 
fort.  Their  charge  was,  however,  checked  by 
the  French  mitrailleuses,  and  further  German 
onslaughts  in  dense  masses  on  the  10th  and  11th 
were  repulsed  with  great  slaughter  by  the 
garrison,  aided  by  a  battery  of  7o's  and  the 
2nd  Cavalry  Division  from  Toul.  The  same 
fate  befell  a  final  German  charge  on  the  13th, 
and  they  were  at  last  compelled  to  give  up 
the  attack  on  the  fort,  in  front  of  wliich  they 
lost  from  seven  to  ten  thousand  men,  and  to 
retire  on  the  frontier. 

On  September  20  they  reoccupied  Thiau- 
court  (often  confounded,  even  in  the  official 
reports,  with  Triaucourt,  in  the  Argonne) 
and  once  more  advanced  on  the  line  of  fortresses 
and  began  a  fresh  bombardment  of  Troyon, 
Les  Paroches,  and  the  Camp  des  Romains, 
from  a  front  extending  north  and  south  in 
front  of  them,  between  Tresauvaux  and 
Heudicourt,  a  distance  of  about  12  miles.  In 
the  covu-se  of  the  next  few  days,  as  the  result 
of  flank  attacks  on  the  ^Nletz  army  by  the 
garrison  of  Toul  from  the  south  and  the  garrison 
of    Verdun   from    the    north,    coupled    with    a 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


427 


FRENCH    ARTILLERY    IN    NORTHERN    FRANCE. 

Firing  a  heavy  gun  at  a  German  position.      The  report  from  these  guns  is  so  terrific  that  some  of 

the  gunners  have  to  protect  their  ears.     Many  have  been  rendered  completely  deaf. 


determined  advance  of  the  Germans  in  the 
centre,  the  dispositions  of  their  troops  were 
altered  till  they  took  the  double  alignment  that 
came  to  be  known  as  the  St.  Mihiel  pocket  or 
wedge,  from  which  there  was  to  be  no  material 
change  for  a  period  of  many  weeks.  The  effect 
of  the  change  was  that  the  German  front  was 
pushed  forwards  from  the  Thiaucourt-Fresnes 
line  (the  17  mile  base  of  the  triangle  of  which 
St.  Mihiel  is  the  apex)  so  as  to  occupy  the  two 
sides  of  the  triangle,  St.  Miliiel-Fresnes  and 
St.  Miliiel-Thiaucourt,  each  14  miles  long. 

This  advance  was  not  due  to  any  defeat  of 
the  French  in  the  Woevre.  It  simply  meant 
that  the  Germans  marched  forwards  as  far 
as  they  could,  till  they  were  brought  up  short 
by  the  fire  of  the  forts  along  the  line  of  the 
Mense  and  the  line  of  the  Second  French  Army, 
almost  at  right  angles  to  it,  wliich  extended 
from  the  Meuse  north  of  Commercy  to  the 
frontier  north-east  of  Nancy.  Their  position 
then  was  that  they  still  had  to  reckon  with 
Troyon,  the  Camp  des  Romains,  and  the  other 
forts  before  they  could  hope  to  cross  the  Meuse, 
and  that  they  also  had  to  guard  their  left 
flank  fron^  the  army  of  General  do  Castelnau 
to  the  south.  Their  double  front  was  not 
therefore  a  matter  of  their  own  choosing. 
It  was  imposed  upon  theixi  by  the  disposition 


of  the  French  lines  of  defence,  which  was  in 
part  due  to  the  fact  that  before  the  war  began 
the  Gennans  had  trespassed  on  the  neutral 
zone  established  and  respected  by  the  French. 
At  the  same  time  the  loss  of  St.  Miliiel  was 
obviously  not  a  part  of  the  French  programme. 
It  appears  to  have  been  due  to  a  miscalculation 
on  their  part.  They  were  said,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  to  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  enemy,  discouraged  by  the  heavy  losses 
they  had  suffered,  had  given  up  the  idea  of 
crossing  the  Meuse.  At  all  events,  it  was 
thought  safe  to  move  a  number  of  battalions 
away  from  the  river  to  reinforce  the  troops 
on  the  Moselle  and  to  the  east  of  it  where  there 
were  signs  of  an  impending  German  advance. 
Intelligence  of  what  had  happened  was  quickly 
carried  to  the  enemy,  and  while  the  French 
ri"ht  was  engaged  beyond  Champenoux  and 
its^eft  was  pushing  back  the  main  body  of 
the  14th  German  Army  Corps  on  the  Rupt  de 
Mud,  the  movement  was  made  which  resulted 
in  the  occupation  of  St.  Mihiel.  The  right  wing 
of  the  Army  of  Mete  executed  a  bold  flank 
march  up  the  left  or  north  bank  of  the  Mad, 
and  the  advance  guard  on  arriving  at  St. 
Mihiel  foiuid  that  it  was  empty  of  Frencli 
troops.  I'rac'tically  without  opi)osition  they 
had   [lenetrated  into   the   heart   of   the   barrier 


4-28 


THE     TIMES    HJSTOliY    OE     THE    WAR. 


SCEUR    JULIE    AND    MONSIEUR 
DOMINIQUE    BONNARD. 

Soeur  Julie   received    the    Cross  of  the    Legion    of 
Honour  for  her  courage  and  devotion  to  duty. 

of   fortresses,    midway    between    Verdun    and 
Toul. 

The  next  thing  was  to  cross  the  Mense. 
On  the  evening  of  September  25  the  main 
body  of  their  army  reached  the  right  barJc, 
to  the  north  of  tlie  to^^•n.  To  resist  them 
there  was  on  the  other  side  of  the  river  a  single 
battaUon  of  Territorials,  but  no  artillery. 
The  French  troops  managed,  however,  to 
delay  their  advance  as  long  as  dayUght 
lasted,  and  diu"ing  the  night,  thoiigh  they 
were  in  a  minority  of  one  to  ten,  with 
rifle-fire  only  they  prevented  the  German 
engineers  from  making  a  pontoon-bridge. 
Early  on  the  morning  of  the  26th  the  position 
suddenly  changed.  The  enemy  placed  Sonne 
heavy  gims  on  the  right  bank,  and  after  that 
further  resistance  was  useless.  The  French 
artillerymen  in  the  Camp  des  Romains  were 
unable,  o\\ing  to  the  intervem'ng  heights,  to 
bring  an  effective  fire  to  bear  on  the  troops 
crossing  the  river,  the  Territorials  were  obliged 
to  fall  back,  carrying  their  wounded  with  them, 
•  and  by  midday  the  Germans  were  across  the 


Mouse,  marcliing  in  the  direction  of  the  valley 
of  the  Aire.  At  la.st  it  must  have  seemed  to 
them  that  the  moment  had  come  when  their 
dreams  of  encircling  Verdun  were  on  the  point 
of  being  realized.  The  French,  however,  were 
fully  alive  to  the  gravity  of  the  situation,  and 
two  forces  were  hurrying  to  dispute  the  enemy's 
advance.  From  the  north  General  Sarrail. 
who  was  pushing  the  Crown  Prince's  Army 
before  him  towards  the  Argonne,  was  able  to 
detach  a  body  of  cavalry  to  hold  them  in  check. 
But  the  main  work  fell  on  the  shoulders  of  the 
20th  Army  Corps  who  had  hastily  been  ordered 
back  from  Champenoux  when  the  news  of 
St.  ISIiliiel  was  received.  Fresh  from  their 
engagement  in  Lorraine  they  marched  through 
the  night  of  the  25th  and  the  morning  and 
afternoon  of  the  next  day,  and  at  5  o'clock  in 
the  evening  their  advance  guard  of  cavalry 
which  had  crossed  the  Meuse  at  I^erouville, 
just  above  Commercj',  got  into  touch  with  the 
enemy  some  miles  to  the  north  in  the  vallej-  of 
the  Aire.  The  dragoons  attacked  at  once  with 
mitrailleuses,  and  so  gave  time,  first  for  the 
artillery  and  then  for  the  infantry  to  come  up 
to  their  support.  Tliree  times  the  Germans 
made  ^■iolent  attempts  to  dislodge  them  from 
tlie  heights  of  the  Aire,  but  all  tliree,  after 
furious  fighting,  were  repulsed,  and  during 
the  night,  after  suffering  severe  losses,  the 
enemy  were  obliged  to  fall  back  on  the  Meuse. 
The  bold  attempt  of  the  Metz  Army  to  come 
to  the  help  of  the  Crown  Prince  had  failed.  All 
that  they  could  do  was  to  entrench  themselves 
at  St.  Mihiel  (still  keeping  their  footing  in  the 
part  of  the  town  on  the  left  bank  of  the  river) 
and  from  there  continue  their  bombardment 
of  the  French  forts.  The  Camp  des  Romains 
(the  nearest  of  them,  and,  for  their  piirjDose,  the 
most  important)  they  completely  destroyed, 
the  garrison  being  compelled  to  surrender  after 
a  most  gallant  resistance.  This,  or  rather  the 
new  fort  which  they  constriicted  close  to  it, 
since  notliing  was  left  of  the  old,  made  theii- 
position  in  St.  Miliiel  secure,  and  for  the  next 
few  months  .all  the  attempts  of  the  French  to 
dislodge  them  were  unsuccessful.  But  the 
strategic  advantage  that  they  gained  by  their 
continued  occvipation  of  the  point  at  the  end 
of  the  St.  ]\Iihiel  wedge  was  always  doubtful. 
It  enabled  them  to  keep  vmder  (but  not  to  take) 
Troyon,  Les  Paroches,  and  the  rest  of  the 
lesser  Meuse  forts,  and  to  bombard  open  towns 
and  villages  like  Sampigny  and  Lerouvillc. 
But    it    also,     as    was    said    in     2' he    Times, 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


4-29 


ARTILLERY    DUEL    IN    THE    AR(iONNE. 

Cleverly  concealed  Erench  batteries  replying  to  the  German  guns,  which  directed  a  searciiing 

shrapnel  fire. 


430 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GERMAN    MOUNTS    IN    HIDDEN    STABLES    IN    THE    ARGONNE. 
Each  horse  has  a  tent  to  protect  it  from  the  cold  ;  the  tent  is  covered  with  branches  to  hide  it 

from  the  enemy. 


kept  a  large  part  of  their  force  in  a 
position  of  considerable  danger ;  all  through 
the  winter  the  trenches  forming  the  legs  of  the 
compasses  of  which  St.  IVIihiel  was  the  pivot, 
were  gradually  closing  in  on  them  and  im- 
perilling their  chances  of  retreat  in  case  it  was 
forced  upon  them. 

On  the  west  side  of  the  Meuse  th^  other 
effort  to  invest  Verdun  had  proved  equally 
unsuccessful.  At  first  things  went  well  for  the 
Crown  Prince's  army,  though  it  was  said  that 
his  Imperial  father  was  seriously  annoyed  at 
his  prolonged  failure  to  reduce  the  fort  of 
Longwy  and  by  the  great  number  of  lives  that 
were  sacrificed  before  it  fell.  Still,  fall  it  did, 
on  August  27,  after  a  siege  of  24  days,  in  spite 
of  the  splendid  defence  of  its  commander, 
Colonel  Darche,  and  its  garrison  of  only  one 
battalion,  and  from  then  till  September  7  the 
Crown  Prince  and  his  army  shared  in  the 
general  triumphant  advance  of  the  German 
centre  and  right.  He  had  under  him  the 
XVI.,  XVIII.,  and  XXI.  Army  Corps,  on  his 
right  the  Duke  of  Wm-temberg,  commanding 
the  IV.,  XI.  and  XIII.  Corps,  in  front  of  Mm 
General  Sarrail  and  the  VI.  and  VIII.  French 
Corps.  On  the  day  after  the  fall  of  Long^vy 
these  two  German  armies,  tlie  4th  and  oth, 
erossed  the  Meuse  at  Mezeires,  Sedan,  and 
Stenay,  50,  40,  and  25  miles  nearly  due  north  of 
Verdun,  the  armies  of  Langle  de  Cary  and 
Sarrail  retiring  before  them.  On  the  same  day, 
the  28th,  the  Crown  Prince  reached  Dun,  five 


miles  liigher  up  the  INIeuse,  on  September  I 
Clermont  in  the  Argonne,  14  miles  west  of 
Verdun,  and  on  the  3rd  Ste.  Menehould,  a  little 
further  west,  on  the  opposite  edge  of  the  forest 
of  the  Argonne,  halfway  between  Verdun  and 
Chalons,  with  the  Duke  of  Wurtemberg's  army 
always  on  his  right,  between  Ste.  Menehould 
and  Reims.  Two  days  later,  after  what  was 
known  as  the  battle  ol  Reims,  the  French  fell 
back  still  fiu-ther,  but  on  September  6  the 
retreat  from  the  ]\Ieuse  to  the  Marne  had  almost 
reached  its  furthest  limit.  The  Crown  Prince's 
army  was  now  occupying  a  front  of  about 
'  20  miles,  from  a  point  south-west  of  Verdun 
and  quite  close  to  it  as  far  as  Revigny,  just  short 
of  Bar-le-Duc,  facing  almost  due  east,  with 
Sarrail  between  him  and  the  ^leuse,  and  on  his 
right  the  Gtemian  4th  army  extended  west- 
wards past  Vitry-le-Fran9ois  on  the  Marne, 
facing  rather  more  to  the  south.  The  loop 
round  Verdun  and  on  both  sides  of  the  Verdim- 
Toul  line  was  now  nearly  completed  ;  the  only 
opening  in  it  was  the  30-mile  stretch  to  the 
south,  between  Bar-le-Duc  and  Toul. 

But  here,  too,  just  as  on  September  26,  in  the 
valley  of  the  Aire,  after  the  Germans  crossed  the 
Meuse  at  St.  Mihiel,  the  cup  was  snatched  from 
their  lips  at  the  last  moment.  The  retreat  of 
the  French  was  over.  The  time  for  the  advance 
had  come,  and  while  Troyon  was  being  bom- 
barded on  the  east  bank  of  the  Meuse  they 
began  to  drive  the  enemy  northwards  towards 
the  Aisne  in   two  divisions,   one  each  side  of 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE     WAR. 


431 


Bar-le-Duc.  To  the  west  of  the  town  they 
pursued  them  hotly  past  the  forest  of  the 
Three  Fountains  and  Revigny,  across  the 
Ornain  to  the  forest  of  Belnoue  ;  to  the  east 
they  forced  them  to  abandon  the  line  of  the 
Saulx,  which  they  had  strongly  entrenched,  and 
followed  them  up  past  Vavincourt,  and  then 
on  to  the  forest  of  Argonne,  where  the  whole 
German  line  split  in  two,  like  a  torrent  dashed 
against  a  huge  rock  in  mid-stream,  and  flowed 
on  right  and  left,  leaving  the  plateau  liigh  and 
dry  in  the  centre.  From  this  time  onwards 
there  was  constant  fighting  in  and  round  the 
forest — an  arduous  campaign  of  fierce  combats 
in  which  the  French  showed  extraordinary 
patience  and  pertina3ity,  and  the  enemy  an 
equally  dogged  spirit  of  resistance.  The  local 
conditions  are  difificult  in  the  extreme.  The 
forest  is  a  narrow  rocky  plateau,  about  30  miles 
long  by  8  wide,  in  the  angle  between  the  Aisne 
and  its  tributary  the  Aire.  Its  shelv-ing  slopes 
are  covered  with  den' e  masses  of  oak,  beech, 
and  hornbeam,  and  a  very  thick  undergrowth, 
broken  only  by  occasional  glades  and  sides  and 
hardly  any  roads.  It  runs  nearly  due  north 
and  south,  and  as  a  rule  is  highest  on  its  east 
side,  from  which  a  number  of  small  burns, 
rimning  at  the  bottom  of  deep-cut  ravines  with 


precipitous  sides  sometimes  150  feet  high,  drop 
down  into  the  Aire.  The  road  and  railway 
between  Ste.  Menehould  and  Clermont,  wliich 
lie  opposite  to  each  other  on  its  left  and  right 
borders,  about  on  a  level  with  Verdun,  divide 
the  forest  into  two  nearly  equal  parts.  Five 
or  six  miles  north  of  this  road  is  another, 
between  Vierme-la-Ville  (just  below  Vienne-la- 


IN    THE    ARGONNE    DISTRICT. 
A  French  outpost  in  the  woods  around  Bagatelle.      Inset  :   In  a  German  trench.     The  wire  netting  seen 

above  is  used  as  a  protection  against  hand-grenades. 


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432 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE    WAR. 


433 


Cliateaii)  and  Varennes,  in  a  part  of  tlie  forest 
known  as  the  Bois  de  la  Grurie,  and  two  miles 
above  this  again  a  rough  track,  too  small  for 
wheeled  traffic,  which  runs  left  to  right  from 
Servon  to  Montblainville.  One  or  two  other 
places  that  were  constantly  referred  to  in  the 
official  accounts  of  the  Argonne  operations 
from  September  to  February  are,  on  the  Vienne- 
Varennes  road,  La  Harazee,  the  Four  de  Paris, 
and  la  Barricade,  and,  bet\\een  Servon  and 
Montblainville,  the  Pavilion  of  Bagatelle — tiny 
little  hamlets,  gamekeepers'  cottages,  and 
roijfless  slieds,  but  none  the  less  important 
landmarks  in  the  intricate  story  of  the  fighting 
in  the  forest. 

On  September  15  the  Germans  were  on  oppo- 
site sides  of  the  forest,  at  Vienne-la-Ville 
and  Varennes,  nine  miles  apart.  The  French 
threw  themselves  into  the  interior  between  these 
tMO  positions  with  the  object  of  preventing 
communication  between  them  and  eventualh- 
of  enveloping  one  or  the  other,  and  entrenched 
tlie  space  between  the  two  roads,  a  rectangle  of 
about  nine  miles  by  three,  the  right  side  of 
which,  from  Bagatelle,  past  a  little  hovel  called 
St.  Hubert  and  Fontaine  Madame  to  Barricade, 
faced  the  east  section  of  the  German  Army  at 
Varennes,  while  the  left  faced  the  enemy  along 
the  line  Binarville-Servon-Vienne.  In  this 
tiny  theatre  of  war,  in  spite  of  constant  en- 
counters of  the  fiercest  description,  the  relative 
positions  remained  practically  unchanged  from 
the  end  of  September  all  through  the  winter 
months.  On  the  west  side  of  the  rectangle, 
where  they  had  to  deal  as  well  with  the  French 
troops  posted  at  Melzicourt,  at  the  jiuiotion  of 
t)>e  Aisne  and  the  Tombe,  the  Germans  were 
never  able  to  encroach  on  the  forest.  Their 
thief  efforts  were  all  made  on  the  other  side, 
fr()n\  their  position  between  Varennes  and 
Mon  blainville.  As  the  result  of  a  series  of 
det3rmined  attacks  between  October  .3  and 
October  20  the  XVI.  Army  Corijs,  forming 
part  of  the  Crown  Prince's  army,  succeeded  at 
last  in  forcing  their  way  at  this  point  into  the 
Bois  de  la  Grurie  between  the  two  roads.  On 
the  12th  they  took  Bagatelle  and  on  the  ir)th 
St.  Hubert  and  the  Barricade.  From  here 
they  advanced  along  the  lower  or  Varennes- 
Vienne  road  to  within  a  quarter  of  a  mile  of 
tlie  Fom-  de  Paris,  and  extending  their  left  front, 
occupied  the  Bois  Bolante  and  Bois  de  la 
Chalade,  just  south  of  the  road. 

Then  came  the  French  riposte.  From  Octo- 
ber 21,  all  through  November,  they  fought  their 


way  steadily  back,  with  infinite  determination 
and  great  gallantry,  through  these  four  or  five 
miles  of  bloodstained  forest,  till  on  the  29th, 
after  six  weeks  of  charge  and  counter-charge, 
they  once  more  reached  Bagatelle  and  occupied 
tlie  same  front  as  in  the  middle  of  September, 
except  that  the  enemy  still  had  a  footing  at 
Barricade.  During  December,  January,  and 
February  fighting  of  this  kind  went  on  day 
after  day  with  hardly  a  break,  and  still  with  no 
modification  of  the  rectangle  of  forest  held  by 
the  French.  But  though  they  could  claim 
nothing  tangible  in  the  way  of  an  advance 
since  September  15  they  had  gained  here,  as  on 
the  whole  of  the  rest  of  the  front,  one  enormous 
advantage.  They  still  had  to  turn  the  enemy 
out  of  their  two  positions— especially  that 
l)etween  \^arennes  and  Montblainville — but  on 
the  whole,  as  compared  with  the  first  weeks  of 
the  war,  it  was  they  and  not  the  Germans  who 
\\ere  the  attacking  partj-. 

The  moral  as  well  as  military  importance 
of  this  bouleversement  of  the  original  con- 
ditions was  immense.  It  was  won  by 
heroic  perseverance  on  the  part  of  all 
the  troops  engaged,  including  the  gallant 
Garibaldian  contingent,  which  fought  for  a 
long  time  in  this  district.  Much  of  the  fighting 
consisted  of  attacks  and  counter-attacks  on 
trenches  extraordinarily  close  to  one  another, 
especially  in  the  Bois  Bolante,  where  they  were 
often  only  from  ten  yards  to  the  length  of  a 
cricket-pitch  apart.  These  attacks  were 
generally  preceded  by  the  explosion  of  mines, 
to  the  making  of  which  the  clayey  soil — though 
an  added  difficulty  in  the  way  of  infantry 
charges — was  admirably  adapted.  In  the  re- 
treat before  the  battle  of  the  Marne,  no  less 
than  at  the  critical  moment  when  they  stood 
with  their  backs  to  the  Meuse  before  they  in 
turn  became  the  pursuers,  the  army  of  General 
Sarrail  show-ed  all  the  traditional  qualities  of 
the  French  soldier.  But  the  finest,  as  it  was 
the  most  anxious  and  trying,  work  that  they 
did  during  the  first  six  months  of  the  war  was 
the  trench-to-trench  struggle  in  those  few 
square  miles  of  deep  ravines  and  trackless 
thickets,  the  short  furious  bursts  and  rushes 
and  the  patient  sapping  and  mining  of  the 
hiind-man's-buff  fighting  in  the  Forest  of  the 
Argonne. 

To  the  west  of  the  Argonne  and  the  Third 
Army  there  were  at  the  time  of  the  retreat  to 
the  Marne  three  other  French  armies  between 
General  Sarrail  and  the  British  Expeditionary 


434 


THE     TIMES     HlSTOIiY    OF     THE    WAl!. 


Force,  those  of  General  Langle  de  Gary,  General 
Foch  and  General  Franchet  d'Esperey.  Unlike 
the  first  three  armies  they  had  no  concern  with 
the  line  of  frontier  fortresses.  They  were 
defending  the  heart  of  France,  the  huge  open 
roIUng  plain  of  Champagne,  in  the  district 
north  of  Chalons  and  east  of  Reims.  There  is 
one  obvious  difference  between  it  and  the 
country  farther  east  which  had  a  direct  bearing 
on  the  course  of  the  war.  The  big  rivers,  the 
Seine,  the  Mame  and  the  Aisne,  run  from  west 
to  east,  instead  of  from  south  to  north  like  the 
Meuse,  the  IMoselle,  and  the  ^Vlortagne.  In  the 
plains  through  which  they  flow  there  are  no 
steep  bhiffs  and  deep-cut  ravines,  and  no 
forestS;  but  numbers  of  httle  fir  woods,  of  geo- 
metric regularity,  with  wide,  bare  spaces 
between  them.  The  soil  is  dry  and  chalky, 
and  the  work  of  digging  trenches  corresponding- 
ly easy.  The  villages  on  the  watercourses  in 
the  hollows  of  the  wide,  shallow  valleys  can  be 
seen  from  great  distances,  and  for  the  same 
reason  the  movements  of  troops  are  both 
difficult  and  costly. 

The  distance  due  north  from  Chalons  on  the 
Marne  to  Rethel  on  the  Aisne  is  about  30  miles  ; 
Reims  lies  halfway  between  them,  a  little  to 
the  west  of  the  direct  line  from  river  to  river. 
On  September  6  the  Duke  of  A^'urtemberg  and 
General  von  Hansen,  commanding  respectively 
the  IVth,  Xlth,  and  Xlllth  Army  Corps  and 
the  Xllth,  XlXth  and  the  Guard,  occupied 
a  front  of  50  miles  extending  from  Revigny, 
past  Vitry-le-Fran9ois  and  the  Camp  de  Mailly, 
which  is  about  20  miles  south  of  Chalons,  to 
the  plateau  of  Sezanne.  On  the  next  two  days 
the  French  in  front  of  them  retreated  still 
farther  south,  but  on  September  9  General 
Foch,  reinforced  bj?^  the  Xth  Army  Corps  (part 
of  the  army  of  General  Franchet  d'Esperey) 
repulsed  an  attack  of  General  von  Hansen  and 
the  Prussian  Guard,  pushing  them  back  on 
Vitry-le-Frangois.  On  the  11th  there  was  a 
general  advance  all  along  the  line,  and  tliree 
days  later  the  French  had  driven  General 
von  Hansen  and  the  Dulce  of  Wurtemberg  back 
more  than  30  miles  across  the  plain  to  a  position 
north  of  Reims  (which  they  re-occupied  on  the 
14th)  and  to  Souain.  This  village,  which  lies 
just  above  the  Camp  de  Chalons,  about  inidway 
between  Reims  and  the  German  position  at 
Vienne  in  the  Forest  of  the  Argonne,  became 
from  that  time  the  centre  of  most  of  the  fighting 
in  the  Champagne  district.  Between  it  and 
the  Forest   of  the   Argonne  the  railway  from 


\'ouzieres  to  Ste.  Menehould  runs  up  the  valley 
of  the  Aisne,  skirting  the  west  edge  of  the 
forest.  At  the  north  end  of  the  forest,  in  the 
narrow  passage  which  separates  it  from  the 
Forest  of  Boule,  a  branch  line  from  this  railway 
follows  the  channel  of  the  Aire  southwards 
along  the  east  side  of  the  Argonne  to  the  other 
German  position  at  Montblainville.  The  pos- 
session of  this  passage,  wliich  is  called  the  Gap 
of  Grand-Pre,  was  therefore  of  great  strategical 
importance,  and  became  the  chief  French 
objective  in  this  direction,,  so  as  to  force  the 
enemy  away  from  the  Forest  of  the  Argonne. 
On  September  19  they  repelled  a  strong  German 
attack  on  their  centre  and  succeeded  in  taking 
Souain,  but  after  that  the  position  remained 
stationary  all  through  October  and  November, 
the  French  line  extending  from  Souain  and  the 
neighbouring  village  of  Perthe  les  Hurlus.  past 
Ville-sur-Tourbe  to  join,  on  the  other  side  of 
the  forest.  General  Sarrail's  front  reaching  as 
far  as  Charny  and  Eix,  a  few  miles  north  and 
north-east  of  Verdun.  From  December  on- 
wards there  was  almost  daily  fighting  round 
Souain,  Perthe-les-Hiu-lus,  Tahiu-e,  Beausejour 
and  Le  Mesnil,  all  within  a  iew  miles  of  each 
other.  Great  slaughter  and  little  progress 
(though  what  there  was  was  in  fa\"our  of  the 
French  and  towards  the  north)  was  the  story 
of  the  fighting  here  through  December,  January 
and  Februarj-,  in  which  months  the  Germans 
alone  lost  10,000  men.  The  severity  of  the 
struggle  was  a  clear  proof  of  the  importance  of 
the  position  in  the  eyes  of  both  of  the  com- 
batants. The  Germans  probably  felt  that  a 
French  advance  here,  if  it  reached  the  Gap  of 
Grand-Pre,  would  so  seriously  threaten  their 
lines  of  communication  that  it  might  prove  the 
beginning  of  that  piercing  of  their  line  which, 
since  the  battle  of  the  Aisne  and  the  beginning 
of  the  war  of  trenches,  had  necessarily  become 
the  chief  object  of  the  Allies — and  the  chief 
fear  of  the  enemy. 

For  the  conditions  of  the  war  had  by  now 
completely  changed.  Not  only  in  the  north  of 
Champagne  and  in  the  Argonne,  but  east  of 
Verdun,  between  the  Meuse  and  the  Moselle, 
in  the  valley  of  the  ^Moselle  towards  Metz,  and 
all  along  the  frontier  to  the  Vosges,  the  first 
force  of  the  characteristic  Germanic  invasion 
had  spent  itself.  Everywhere  the  Germans 
were  besieged,  and  their  efforts  to  advance 
became  more  like  the  sorties  of  a  beleaguered 
garrison  than  the  impetuous  onrushes  of  an 
army  of  attack.     Even  in  the  AA'oevre  and  the 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


435 


St.  Mihiel  wedge,  in  spite  of  their  apparently 
tlireatening  position,  it  was  their  lines  much 
more  than  Verdun  that  were  in  a  state  of  siege. 
Verdun,  indeed,  in  spite  of  numerous  German 
statements  to  the  contrary,  had  not  been 
besieged  at  all.  General  Sarrail,  believing 
strongly  in  the  maxim,  "  ville  assiegee,  ville 
prise,"  had  seen  to  that,  by  extending  its 
fortifications  many  miles  in  advance  of  the 
original  zone.  But  though  the  day  of  the  old- 
fashioned  rampart  had  gone,  the  value  as  well 
as  the  power  of  artillery  had  enormously 
increased,  and  the  guns  on  both  sides  played  a 
prominent  part  in  the  autumn  and  winter 
operations.  A  good  idea  of  the  way  in  which 
they  were  employed,  and  of  the  ordinary  life 
of  the  infantry  when  not  actually  in  the  trenches 
was  given  in  an  article  written  by  the  Paris 
correspondent  of  The  Times,  in  which  he 
described  a  visit  to  Verdun  in  December : 

Verdun,  he  wrote,  summarizes  a  development  in  the 
art  of  siege  operations.  It  is  a  walled,  battlemented  city, 
with  moat,  drawbridges,  and  portcullis,  protected  by  an- 
outer  ring  of  forts,  which  were  modern  a  few  months  ago. 
Now  every  height  and  every  valley  in  the  country  for 
20  miles  aroinid  has  been  so  laboured  at  that  there  are 
fields  ploughed  by  trenches  and  hillsides  so  closely  dotted 
with  short  poles  supporting  barbed  wire  that  they  recall 


the  vineyards  of  Champagne  when  the  vines  have  been 
cut  in  the  autumn. 

In  the  valleys  through  which  we  passed  on  our  way 
to  a  vantage  point  in  the  Meuse  heights  from  which  to 
survey  an  artillery  duel  in  progress  we  gained  more 
clearly  than  in  the  plains  of  Flanders  some  idea  of  the  way 
in  which  war  is  a  test  of  national  efficiency,  and  the 
completeness  with  which  an  army  is  self-contained. 
Regiinents  were  at  work  making  new  roads  and  remaking 
old  where  they  were  worn  by  the  constant  stream  of 
food  and  ammunition  convoys,  of  artillery  on  the  march, 
of  rushing  motor-cars,  and  of  ponderously  moving  heavy 
g\ms.  In  the  woods  other  regiments  were  felling  trees, 
clearing  the  fire-zone  of  some  hidden  battery.  Others 
were  weaving  twigs  into  basliets  wliich,  filled  with  earth, 
will  strengthen  the  scattered  defences.  In  the  liilU 
others,  again,  were  cutting  the  trunks  of  young  trees 
into  stakes  for  barbed  ^^'ire  entanglements,  preparing 
planks  for  the  roofing  of  trenches,  or  for  the  manufacture 
of  hospital  beds,  or  for  the  construction  of  the  niar- 
vellous  winter  dwellings  which  the  handy  soldier  of 
Franco  is  building  for  himself  in  these  exposed  regions. 

Gazing  from  the  observation  station  the  eye  was 
caught  here  and  there  by  clusters  of  men  busy  as  bees. 
White  ribbon-like  roads  were  speckled  with  slowly, 
moving  dots  of  motor  convoys,  of  the  ever  gay-hearted 
French  artilleryman  going  or  returning  from  his  posi- 
tion in  the  battery  emplacements,  constructed  with 
marvellous  skill  by  French  engineers  in  the  exposed 
hillsides  around  Verdun. 

By  giving  free  rein  to  the  initiative  and  constructive 
abilities  of  the  private  in  the  Frencli  artillery,  the  whole 
of  this  section  of  the  front  is  dotted  with  charming 
artillery  "  garden  cities,"  made  by  the  men  themselves 
without  any  supervision  from  their  officers.  A  huge 
scoop  is  taken  out  of  the  wooded,  sandy  hillside  and  the 
\illage  nestles  right  into  the  heart  of  the  hill.     About 


FRENCH    GUNNERS    AT    WORK. 
The  famous  75  mm.  gun  in  action  in  the  Argonne  Forest. 


4^C, 


THE    TIMES    HISTOUY    OF    THE     WAB. 


it  is  a  firorowned  crest  over  \vl;ic!i  the  guns  firo  at 
point  "  4ti  "  on  "  X  "  lull  some  mile.--  away.  Below 
it  stretches  a  valley  flaked  with  the  blue  smoke  of  the 
soldier-woodmen's  fires.  Over  the  distant  range  of  hills 
float-;  a  captive  balloon.  Here  and  there  is  a  glmt  of  sun 
upon  the  wings  of  a  speeding  aeroplane.  The  battery 
itself  contributes  nothing  to  the  general  view.  Its 
four  gun.=,  each  in  its  little  stall  of  turf,  are  covered  with 
branches  of  spruce.  The  cottages  of  the  men  are  built 
of  straw  or  covered  with  the  branches  of  trees  and  are 
lost  in  the  general  covmtryside.  When  wo  approached 
the  "  village  "  the  men  tumbled  out  of  the  porches  and 
lined  up  for  inspection  by  the  General.  They  seemed 
At  first  sight  to  be  the  only  sign  of  war  in  the  whole 
valley.  It  was  perfectly  preposterous  to  think  that  at 
any  moment  a  distant  thud  and  a  strange  whistling 
■sound  would  either  send  everybody  scuttling  to  splinter- 
proof  shelters  or  to  the  removal  of  the  spruce  branches 
in  front  of  the  battery  and  the  dispatch  of  several  tons 
of  steel  and  explosives  towards  the  distant,  unseen,  and 
tnysterious  point  "  4G  "  far  awaj'  on  the  other  side  of  the 
hill.     An  artiUery  duel  is  a  curious  affair. 

Climbing  higher  up  the  hillside — indeed  quite  to  the 
very  crest  of  the  range — we  had  a  wider  view  of  the 
battlefield  of  the  Meuse,  which  stretches,  taking  the 
German  line,  from  Vauquois,  through  the  Bois  de  Mont- 
tancon  to  the  north-east,  through  Flabas  to  Azannes, 
then  south  to  Ornes  to  the  east  of  £tain,  then  south-west 
to  Maizeray,  then  south-west  to  Les  Epargos,  thence 
almost  in  a  straight  line  through  Amorville  to  St.  Mihiel. 
From  the  point  upon  which  we  were  standing,  facing 
north-east,  a  ragged  white  line  in  the  plain  marked  the 
German  trenches.  Behind  it,  across  the  wood  of  IMont- 
faucon,  set  like  a  piece  of  jade  in  the  silver  of  innumerable 
lakes  and  streams,  rose  the  pointed  spire  of  ]\Iontfaucon, 
its  outline  blurred  by  a  cloud  of  smoke  hanging  over  the 
village.  The  sound  of  guns  firing  upon  Montfaucon  was 
mnftied  by  the  cushion  of  the  intervening  hill  and  forest. 
Never  was  there  such  a  pleasantly  peaceful  afternoon. 

Suddenly,  with  a  soaring  roar  over  the  woods  in  the 
foreground,  four  shells  from  the  battery  near  which  we 
stood  sped  out  towards  the  hidden  Germans.  It  all 
seemed  very  aimless  until  General  Sarrail,-  pointing 
overhead,  explained  this  sudden  activity.  An  aeroplane 
wr>rking  with  this  battery  had  transmitted  by  wireless 


IN    THE    CHAMPAGNE    DISTRICT. 

French    soldiers    searching   for    Germans    in    a 

village  farmhouse. 


the  result  of  its  reconnaissance.  Little  speckq  of  lij^ht, 
such  as  splinter  the  darkness  of  the  night  on  an  overhead 
electric  tramway,  showed  bright  even  against  the  day- 
light sky  as  battery  after  battery  came  into  action.  All 
seemed  as  if  anxious  to  join  in  the  conversation — bass, 
alto  and  tenor  mado  their  voices  heard — and  down  in 
the  jjlain  along  the  tree-lined  roa<!  the  men  in  the  trenches 
stopped  their  game  of  dominoes  and  prepared  to  add  an 
asthmatic  soprano  of  musketry  to  the  general  '^horu.s. 

Day  and  night  this  apparently  aimless  artillery  duel 
fills  the  hills  with  the  sound  of  the  banging  of  big  gongs. 
Day  and  night  French  cavolry  patrol  the  two  neutral 
zones,  the  no-n^an's  land  left  between  Etain  and  Haute- 
Cour,  between  Hermevillc  and  Warcq,  watching  for 
any  sign  of  advance  by  the  enemy  through  these  two 
inviting  corridors,  stumbling  every  now  and  again  upon 
a  German  patrol  engaged  upon  the  same  mission,  and 
adding  their  weekly  quota  to  the  list  of  killed  and 
wounded. 

It  is  the  men  in  the  trenches  who  are  giving  Verdun 
her  elbow  room.  It  is  the  artillery  which  renders  their 
existence  possible. 

Tt  was  the  same  story  all  along  tlie  line.  The 
men  in  t'le  trenches  gave  Verdun  and  Toul 
and  Epinal  and  Belfort  elbow  room,  and  the 
artillery  made  their  existence  possible.  As  the 
result  of  their  combined  operations  the  Germans 
were  everywhere  pressed  slowly  back,  or  at  least 
prevented  fron^  advancing,  through  the  five 
months  from  October  to  February.  Between 
\'erdun  and  the  Vosges  this  pressure  on  the 
enemy's  Unes  was  most  severe  at  certain  point."^ 
of  particular  strategic  value.  Thus  in  the 
Woevre,  though  it  was  kept  up  without  inter- 
mission on  both  sides  of  the  St.  IMihiel  wedge, 
it  was  most  vigorous  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
liltain,  on  the  line  between  Fresnes  and  St. 
Mihiel,  and  on  the  southern  side  of  the  wedge  at 
the  forest  of  Apremont  and  the  Bois  de  Mort- 
Mare,  a  little  south  of  Thiaucovui;.  The 
reasons  for  this  were  two-fold.  It  was  never 
the  French  policy  to  clear  the  enemy  out  of  the 
Woevre  by  hammering  at  the  point  of  the 
wedge.  The  strength  of  the  fort  in  the  Camp 
des  Remains,  close  to  St.  Mihiel,  made  its 
western  extremity  almost  impregnable,  except 
a  the  cost  of  very  heavy  losses.  Their  main 
idea,  therefore,  was  to  compel  the  Germans  to 
evacuate  St.  Mihiel  and  the  Camp  des  Romains 
by  bringing  lateral  presstore  to  bear  at  the  other 
end  of  the  two  sides,  so  as  to  press  them  to- 
gether hke  the  legs  of  a  pair  of  compasses. 
At  the  same  time  they  \\  ished  to  get  at  the 
strategic  railway  by  which  the  enemy  brought 
their  supplies  to  St.  Mihiel  througli  the  Trouee 
de  Spada.  The  fighting  was  therefore  most 
severe  at  the  points  wliich  best  lent  themselves 
to  the  prosecution  of  these  two  objects,  both  of 
which  were  intended  to  compel  the  retreat  of 
the  Germans  from  the  point  of  the  wedge. 
North  of  Nancy  there  was  in  the  same  way  a 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF    THE    WAR. 


481 


prolonged  succession  of  infantry  and  artillery 
engagements  all  through  the  winter,  near  Pont- 
a-Mousson,  in  the  Bois  le  Pretre.  Very  slowly, 
foot  by  foot  and  trench  by  trench,  and  not 
without  splendid  courage  and  many  costly 
rebuffs,  the  French  fought  their  way  through 
the  wood,  and  therefore  along  the  valley  of  the 
Moselle,  towards  Metz.  Measured  in  miles, 
or  even  yards,  the  advantage  gained,  at  great 
expense,  was  trifling.  But  it  prepared  the  way 
for  a  possible  advance  on  the  fortress  in  that 
direction,  and  at  the  same  time  pressed  the 
enemy  bac^k  towards  the  frontier,  in  the  same 
way  as  the  less  well  known  operations  lower 
down  ill  the  forest  of  Pasroy,  and  in  front  of 
Badonviller.  As  the  Germans  were  actually 
at  first,  and  technically  afterwards,  the  attack- 
ing force,  they  could  hardly  look  upon  the 
general  result  of  the  winter  campaign  on  this 
part  of  the  line  as  satisfactory.  They  had 
killed  or  deported  as  Hostages  a  large  number 


BARBED    WIRE    DEFENCES    IN    FRANCE. 

French  sentry  in  his  dugout  behind  entanglements 

on  a  main  road.    Inset  :  Bringing  in  the  wounded 

in  the  Argonne. 

of  innocent  non-combatants,  and  had  pillaged 
and  bvu-nt  the  villages  and  towns  in  which  they 
lived,  and  they  had  driven  back  the  French 
aniij'  which  tried  to  invade  Lorraine.  But  at 
the  end  of  February  they  were  almost  as  far 
from  their  original  goal  as  they  were  before  the 
war  began,  and  much  further  from  it  than  at  the 
end  of  August. 

Alsace  and  the  Vosges. 

In  Alsace  and  the  Vosges  they  fared  still 
worse,  since  here  the  French  had  still  a  strong 
footing,  though  their  positions  were  not  as  far 
advanced  as  they  were  at  the  beginning  of  the 
war,  when  at  one  time  they  penetrated  within 
ten  miles  of  the  Rhine.  For  this  partial 
retirement  there  were  two  reasons.  It  was 
due,  in  the  first  part  of  the  campaign,  to  mis- 
takes of  generalship  which  followed  on  the 
brilliant  opening.  After  the  first  occupation  of 
Miilhausen,  the  French  retreated  because  they 
were  obliged  to  by  a  defeat  on  the  spot.  They 
fell  back  from  Miilhausen  the  second  time 
because  of  the  reverses  suffered  further  nortli,  at 
Morhange  and  elsewhere,  as  the  result  of  which 
General  Joffre  decided  to  reduce  the  size  of  tlie 
army  in  Alsace,  so  as  to  concentrate  stronger 
forces  at  the  points  where  the  need  for  the  time 
being  was  greatest.  In  subsequent  operations 
during  the  course  of  the  \\'inter  on  practically 
every  occasion  when  the  French  withdrew 
nearer  to  their  own  frontier,  they  did  so  in 
order  to  avoid   useless  loss  of  life   in  holding 


438 


THE     TIMKS    HISTORY    OF     THE     WAR. 


ptxsitions    not    so    strong    or    so    strategically 
important  as  others  further  back. 

From  a  mihtary  point  of  view  the  campaign 
in  Alsace  up  to  the  end  of  February  was  not 
of  great  importance.  There  was  plenty  of  liard 
fighting  in  the  Vosges  and  the  long  narrow 
plateau,  twenty  miles  across,  between  them  and 
the  Rhine,  but  neither  side  made  use  of  such 
large  bodies  of  troops  as  were  employed  along 
the  rest  of  the  front.  The  moral  effect,  how- 
ever, of  the  continued  PVench  occupation  of 
part  of  the  annexed  province  w-as  considerable 
in  both  coimtries.  The  French  were  elated  and 
the  Germans  proportionately  depressed  by  the 
partial  undoing  of  one  of  the  visible  results  of 
the  war  of  1870.  In  Alsace  itself  the  behaviour 
of  the  Germans  greatly  increased  the  disUke 
with  which  they  were  already  regarded  by  a 
large  part  of  the  inhabitants.  In  the  big 
towns,  from  the  beginning  of  the  war,  they 
systematically  kept  them  in  a  state  of  complete 
ignorance  of  everything  that  did  not  tell  in  their 
favour.  In  MUlhausen,  for  instance,  and  also  in 
jVIetz  and  Strassburg,  the  news  of  the  battle  of 
the  Marne  and  of  everj^  other  success  of  the 
Allies  was  carefully  concealed,  and  on  the  other 
hand  the  extent  of  German  triumphs  was 
greatly  exaggerated.  Spies  and  informers  made 
life  intolerable  for  all  who  were  suspected  of 
pro -French  sympathies,  and  even  the  speaking 
of  French  was  automatically  suspended,  as  it 
was  certain  to  lead  to  denunciation.  No  one 
dared  to  risk  it.  When  the  German  troops  came 
back  to  Miilhausen  after  the  first  occupation, 
they  proceeded  to  round  up  two  or  three 
hundred  of  the  male  inliabitants  who  were 
foreigners,  including  a  large  nmnber  of  French 
Alsatians,  and  imprisoned  them  for  varj'ing 
periods  in  the  interior  of  Germany.  There 
Mere  people  of  all  classes  and  ages  among  them, 
rich  manufacti.u'ers  and  poor  artizans,  old  and 
young,  and  all  were  treated  with  the  same 
callous  inhumanity  (their  only  crime  being 
that  they  were  not  Germans),-  except  that  the 
handful  of  English,  whatever  their  station, 
were  bvillied  and  browbeaten  more  than  the 
rest  and  set  to  tio  the  most  degrading  tasks. 
On  the  evening  of  their  arrest,  before  they  were 
taken  away  from  Miilhausen,  the  whole  body  of 
the  prisoners  were  suddenly  ordered  to  form 
themselves  into  ranks,  and  the  first  rank  were 
then  placed  against  a  wall  opposite  to  a  few 
files  of  soldiers  who  M-ent  through  the  motions 
of  loading  and  presenting  their  rifles.  The 
unfortunate  men  naturally  concluded  that  their 


last  hour  had  come,  wlien  suddenly  the  oflficfp 
who  was  presiding  over  the  heartless  ceremoiij 
stepped  forward  and  explained  brutally  that 
now  they  knew  what  would  happen  to  theni  if 
they  showed  any  signs  of  insubordination. 
In  all  the  sliameful  story  of  the  callous  cruelty 
of  the  Germans  during  the  war  it  would  be 
difficult  to  find  a  more  glaring  example  of  I  he 
way  in  which  the  lust  of  conquest  had  blinded 
a  part  of  the  nation  to  the  most  elementary 
principles  of  right  and  wrong. 

After  the  second  retreat  from  Miilhausen  the 
army  of  Alsace,  very  much  weakened  l)y  the 
removal  of  some  of  its  units  to  different  parts 
of  the  frontier,  proceeded  to  entrench  itself  in 
front  of  Belfort  along  a  line  of  about  25  miles, 
starting  from  Thann  at  the  foot  of  the  Vosges, 
and  passing  between  Dannemarie  and  Altkircli 
to  Moos,  near  the  jimction  of  the  Frencli, 
German  and  Swiss  frontiers.  Supported  by 
the  garrison  of  Belfort  they  held  this  line  all 
through  the  autimin,  in  spite  of  many  deter- 
mined efforts  to  dislodge  them,  besides  making 
it  the  base  for  constant  reconnaissances  in  force, 
which  sometimes  advanced  20  miles  into  the 
enemy's  country.  During  the  winter,  when 
the  rain-soaked  ground  l:)egan  to  make  mana:'u- 
\Tes  of  this  kind  ahnost  impossible,  in  order  to 
avoid  wintering  in  the  open  country  and 
because  of  the  floods  which  threatened  to  cut 
them  off  from  their  base  of  supply,  they  fell 
back  a  little  nearer  to  Belfort,  on  the  railway 
between  Daiuiemarie  and  Pfetterhausen,  in  the 
A'allej?  of  the  Largue.  The  enemy,  who  com- 
manded the  railway  north  of  Pfirt  by  Altkirch 
to  Miilhausen,  and  from  there  to  Cernay,  did 
not  suffer  from  the  same  difficulties  of  transport, 
and  were  able  to  occupy  tlie  various  positions 
as  they  were  evacuated  by  the  French,  but 
only  after  they  had  retired  of  their  own  accord. 
Not  one  of  them  ^^•as  taken  by  assault,  and 
through  most  of  December  there  was  hardlj- 
any  fighting  in  Haute  Alsace  beyond  trifling 
skirmishes  and  affairs  between  the  outposts. 
But  about  Christmas  snow  began  to  fall,  and 
as  soon  as  the  frost  had  made  marcliing  more 
possible  the  French  resumed  the  offensive. 
They  had  in  the  meantime  received  reinforce- 
ments, consisting  partly  of  Alpine  troojis  who 
were  used  to  manoeuvring  in  the  snow,  and 
they  succeeded  quickly  in  gaining  several 
important  strategic  jjositions  near  Steinbach 
and  Altkirch,  from  which  they  w^ere  able  to 
tlu-eaten  IVIiilhausen  from  two  directions  at 
once.     To  this  the  Germans  replied  by  bringing 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE     WAR. 


439 


down  fresh  troops  from  the  north  of  France 
and  strengthening  their  artillery,  which  up  to 
that  time  had  been  rather  weak.  From  now 
onwards  the  campaign  in  Haute  Alsace  settled 
down  for  the  most  part  into  tiie  stubborn 
snails  pace  warfare  of  the  trenches.  But  every 
now  and  then  there  \\ere  exceptions.  Between 
Deceiliber  27  and  January  8  there  was  fierce 
fighting  for  the  possession  <>f  tlie  point  425 
r.ear  Cernay.  and  the  Germans  finally  succeeded 
by  a  characteristic  attack  in  column,  in  estab- 
lishing themselves  on  the  side  of  the  hill. 
Another  position  in  the  same  district,  a  sliort 
distance  farther  to  the  north,  a  few  miles  above 
Thann,  which  became  the  centre  of  a  prolonged 
struggle,  was  the  hill  of  Hartmannsweilerkopf, 
2,8G8  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea.  At  the 
end  of  December  the  Germans  held  the  east 
slope  and  the  French  the  west.  In  the  first 
days  of  the  new  year  the  French  captured  the 
.sunuuit,  and  established  on  it  a  post  of  about 
one  company  in  strength.  A  German  detach- 
ment of  two  battalions  was  ordered  to  dislodge 
them.  Approaching  the  hill  from  the  east, 
they  attacked  two  bodies  of  French  troops, 
first  at  Hirzenstein,  to  the  south  of  their 
objt'Ctive,  and  then  in  the  depression  between 
Hartmaiuisweilerkopf  and  Molkenrein,  another 


steep  mountain  a  mile  or  two  to  the  west  of  it, 
a  dangerous  but  clever  movement  which  was 
rewarded  with  success.  The  small  detachment 
of  Alpine  troops  on  the  top  of  Hartmanns- 
weilerkojjf  was  thijs  completely  cut  oE  from 
its  base,  but  for  several  days  from  their  strongly 
entrenched  position  kept  up  a  gallant  fight 
against  the  much  stronger  force  of  the  enemy. 
At  last  about  40  of  the  chasseurs,  mounted  on 
skis,  determined  to  make  a  sortie  and  try  to 
join  the  main  body.  The  order  was  given  to 
fix  bayonets,  and,  headed  by  two  officers,  \\itli 
loud  cries  of  "  Vive  la  France,"  the  little  body 
of  heroes  ghssaded  down  over  the  frozen  snow 
right,  into  the  middle  of  the  enemy.  At  the 
end  of  a  few  minutes  of  fierce  hand  to  hand 
fighting  not  a  single  Frenchman  was  left  alive. 
The  rest  of  the  company  at  the  top  of  the  hill 
fought  on  bravelv  till  two-thirds  of  tlieir  number 
and  all  of  their  ammunition  was  gone,  and  then 
were  finally'  overcome.  For  the  time  being 
Hartmannsweilerkopf  was  lost  to  the  Frs^neh, 
but  they  still  held  the  almost  impregnable 
mountain  of  Molkenrein,  the  chief  peak  of  the 
di.strict,  3,375  feet  high,  close  to  it,  and  effec- 
tually barring  the  entrance  to  the  middle  and 
upper  parts  of  the  valley. 

From  the  end  of  Januarv  onwards  both  sides 


CHASSEURS    ALPINS    NEGOTIATING    A    MOUNTAIN    STREAM 


440 


THE     TIMES    HISTOHY     OF     THE     WAR. 


tnade  several  attacks  in  various  parts  of  Alsace 
without  gaining  any  material  advantage. 
Cernay,  Miilhausen,  and  the  Rhine-Rhone  canal 
were  the  chief  objectives  of  the  French  ;  the 
most  vigorous  fighting  was  round  Altkirch. 
between  Aspach  and  Heidweiler,  to  the  north 
(if  the  t  >un,  and  in  the  forest  of  Hirzbach,  just 
south  of  it.  The  affair  at  Aspach  wa,s  par- 
ticularlj'  violent,  and  in  the  end  the  French, 
as  the  result  of  a  brilliant  bayonet  charge, 
succeeded  in  establishing  themselves  well  in 
front  of  their  original  position.  Generally 
speaking,  the  fighting  in  the  rest  of  Alsace  up 
to  the  end  of  February  consisted  chiefly  of  a 
violent  series  of  artillery  duels,  though  even 
these  were  conducted  with  great  difficulty 
owing  to  the  flooded  state  of  the  country.  Both 
sides  were  waiting  for  the  spring  to  come,  and 
there  was  little  change  in  the  relative  position.s 
of  the  two  armies.  But  the  net  result  was  in 
favour  of  the  French.  They  held  not  only  the 
crests  of  the  Vosges,  but  the  valleys  running 
down  through  them  to  the  plain  of  the  Rhine, 
and  at  the  lower  ends  of  the  valleys  they 
continued  to  resist  successfully  the  efforts  of 
the  Germans  to  force  a  way  up  them  into 
France.     South  of  the  range  they  had     estab- 


lished a  strong  line  across  the  entrance  to  the 
Trouee  of  Belfort,  and  by  advancing  towards 
Miilhausen  and  Altkirch  had  practically  shut 
them  out  from  any  hope  they  might  have  had 
of  making  a  direct  attack  on  the  famous  fortress. 
Before  the  coming  of  spring,  therefore,  it 
seemed  likely  that  Belfort  (which  was  further 
protected  by  many  miles  of  newly  constructed 
entrenchments)  would  remain,  as  in  1870, 
unsubdued  and  even  unattacked. 

But  that  was  the  one  solitary  point  in  which 
there  was  any  resemblance  at  all  between  the 
state  of  affairs  in  1870  and  at  the  beginning  of 
1915.  Everything  else  was  diiferent,  and  the 
whole  of  the  change  was  strongly  in  fav-our  of 
France  and  her  allies.  The  Germans  had  come 
once  again,  but  they  had  not  conquered.  The 
France  that  they  found  this  time  was  a  united 
France,  headed  by  a  united  Government,  and 
defended  by  a  united  anny — an  army  purged 
of  its  incompetent  officers,  biu-ning  with 
indignation  at  the  wanton  attack  that  had  been 
made  upon  the  freedom  of  France  and  of 
Europe,  and  unflinching  in  its  resolve  to  fight 
and  to  go  on  fighting,  no  matter  how  great  the 
cost,  till  all  fears  of  another  such  attack  were 
at  an  end. 


rffi  ^  -li^  " 


x 


(C^^^ 


s> 


^  ,^^ 


•^^ 


/ 


>r         '-^- 


4/ 


Frnncp     a'^'hi)  fires     pric     h-s 


Facsimile  of  official  vise  of  the  Mayor  of  Eadonviller,  Monsieur  Benoit,  on 
the  passport  of  the  "Times"  special  correspondent  in  the  East  of  France. 
Badonviller  was  three  times  occupied  by  the  Germans,  who  took  away  all 
the  official  stamps  of  the  town  except  the  one  pictured  above,  which  is 
that  of  the  "  Tueries,"  a  local  slaughter-house.  The  wife  of  the  N.'ayor 
(whose  signature  forms  part  of  the  iist)  was  shot  by    the    Germans    in    the 

street  before  his  eyts. 


CHAPTER    LXII. 


THE    BATTLE    OF    YPRES 
(FIRST  PHASE). 


The  Opening  Moves  of  the  Battle  of  Ypres — The  French  Advance  to  Roulers,  and  the 
British  on  Menin  and  Lille — Duke  of  Wurtemberg  Heavily  Reinforced — Victory  of  the 
Germans  at  Roulers — Arrival  of  Sir  Douglas  Haig  and  I.  Corps — Situation  on  October  19 

The  Field  of  Battle — Strong  and  Weak  Points  of  the  Ai.lied  Position — Attempt  of 

Sir  Douglas  Haig  to  Break  the  German  Centre  North  of  the  Lys — The  Allies  Obliged  to 
Fight  a  Defensive  Battle — Le  Gheir  Lost — General  Hunter-Weston  Retakes  it  on  the 

21st The  Battle  of  October  22  ;    Retirement  of  Sir  Horace  Smith-Dorrien  to  the  Line 

Givenchy-Neuve  Chapelle-Fauquissart  ;  Cavalry  Corps  Reinforced  by  Indian  Infantry  ; 
The  7th  Infantry  Division  in  Danger  ;  The  Line  of  the  I.  Corps  Broken  near  Pilkem — 
Battle  of  October  23  ;  The  British  Drive  Back  the  Germans  and  Save  the  Day — Arrival 
OF  French  9th  Coups. 


WHILE,  as  related  in  Chapter  LIV., 
the  Duke  of  Wurtemberg  from 
October  16  to  23  was  struggling  m 
face  of  the  Belgian  Army  and 
Ronarc'h's  Marines  to  cross  the  Yser,  a  battle 
of  the  most  desperate  natiire  was  proceeding 
from  Dixmude  to  Armentieres  and  trom 
Armentieres  to  La  Bassee.  It  arose  out  of  the 
efforts  of  the  Allies  to  take  the  initiative  against 
the  Germans. 

The  plan  of  campaign  adopted  by  Joffre  and 
French  was  to  fight  a  defensive  battle  with  the 
left  wing  of  their  armies  on  the  Yser  and  to 
attack  with  their  centre  in  front  of  Ypres  and 
with  their  right  south  of  the  Lys  On  the 
17th,  when  the  Germans  were  shelling  the 
Belgians  in  the  villages  east  of  the  Yser, 
the  cavalry  of  De  Mitry  cleared  the  Forest  of 
Houthulst  of  the  Germans ;  the  3rd  British 
Cavalry  Division  extended  its  left  to  West- 
roosebeke  and  its  right  to  Droogonbroodlioek. 
The  next  day  (the  18th)  Ronarc'h  rcoccupied 
Eessen,  the  mounted  African  troops  threatened 
Bovekerke  and  the  woods  of  Couckelaerc, 
Vol.  III.— Part  38 


De  Mitry's  cavalry  entered  Cortemarck  and 
Roulers,  the  7th  British  Infantry  Division 
marched  on  Menin,  and  our  Cavalry  Corps 
pressed  down  the  north  bank  of  the  Lys  to 
assist  in  captm-ing  the  bridge-heads  over  the 
river. 

The  III.  Corps,  north  of  the  Lys,  on  the  17th 
had  occupied  Le  Gheir  at  the  eastern  edge  of 
the  Bois  de  I'loogsteert  opposite  Pont  Rouge, 
and  its  centre  and  right  wing  extended  over 
the  Lys  towards  Radinghem  on  the  ridge  be- 
tween the  Lys  and  the  La  Bassee-Lille  Canal.* 
Though  the  enemy  had  been  heavily  rein- 
forced, on  the  18th  Pulteney  captured  Rading- 
hem, Ennetieres.  Capinghem,  at  which  last- 
mentioned  village  the  British  troops  were 
between  Forts  Englos  and  Carnot,  the  two 
works  guarding  Lille  from  an  attack  on  flio 
west.  The  left  of  the  III.  Corps  was  astride 
the  Lys,  400  yards  south  of  Frelinghien, 
its  right  in  touch  with  Conncau's  Cavalry 
Corps.     Beyond    Conneau's    Cavalry    the    II. 

*  The  Corps  of  the  Britisii  Expeditionary  Force  ai*o 
numbered  in  Roman  figures. 


441 


442 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


ON    GUARD. 

A  British  sentry  on  the  walls  of  a  ruined 
chateau. 


Corps  had  on  the  1 7th  taken  Aubers  on 
the  ridge  and  Herlies  to  its  south,  and  the 
next  day  it  gallantly  repulsed  several  severe 
counter-attacks.  If  the  ridge  could  be  held, 
the  Germans  might  be  driven  from  Lille 
and  La  Ba*!s6e. 

So  far  the  only  misadventure  in  the  battle  had 
been  the  repulse  of  the  7th  Infantry  Division, 
which  had  been  unable  to  take  Menin.  Mr. 
Underwood,  an  interpreter  to  the  Staff  of  the 
21st  Infantry  Brigade,  describes  some  of  the 
fighting  of  that  Division  on  the  18th.  The 
21st  Brigade  before  dawn  had  marched  to 
Becelaere  and  moved  on  Terhand  : 

The  troops  marched  out  of  Gheluvelt  at  4.30  a.m., 
and  arrived  at  Becelaere  7.30  a.m.  The  22nd  R.F.A. 
opened  fire  on  our  left,  and  the  battle  began.  This  was 
the  baptism  of  fire  for  most  of  our  brigade,  and  they 
stuck  it  well.  At  8.30  a.m.  the  whole  line  advanced  to 
Terhand.  At  11  a.m.  our  first  casualties  were  reported  : 
1  officer  killed  and  2  wounded  in  the  Bedfordshires,  and 
20  men  wounded.  We  took  up  our  quarters  at  five 
o'clock  in  a  farmhouse  200  yards  in  rear  of  Terhand  wind- 
mill. A  battery  of  our  gims  was  posted  there,  and 
opened  fire  on  the  enemy.  The  farmer,  his  wife,  two 
daughters,  and  one  son,  with  two  refugee  women  and 
three  children  from  Ghent,  were  also  there.  The  battery 
had  hardly  opened  fire  when  the  enemy  replied, -and 
soon  the  shells  were  whirring  right  over  the  farmhouse, 
much  to  the  discomfiture  of  the  inmates.  By  six  o'clock 
our  guns  had  silenced  the  enemy's  batteries,  and  we  were 
once  more  at  peace  ;  but  the  shells  had  done  a  good  deal 
of  damage  to  Terhand  village.  We  did  not  undress  that 
night,  as  we  expected  a  night  attack.  This,  however 
did  not  mature. 

The  explanation  of  the  Allied  offensive 
north  of  the  Lys  is  a  simple  one.  For  their 
operations  against  the  AlUed  line  north  of 
the  Lys  the  Gtermans  were  bound  to  keep 
hold  of  the  Menin-Roulers-Thourout-Ostend 
highway,  because  from  it  proceeded  west- 
wards all  the  roads  by  which  they  could 
approach  the  Allied  line  between  Ypres  and  he 
sea.  Moreover,  a  little  to  the  east  of  it  ran  the 
Lille-Menin-Thourout-Ostend  railway,  joined 
at  Roulers,  Lichtervelde,  and  Thourout  by 
lines  connecting  with  Liege  and  thence  with 
the  strategic  railways  of  Germany.  Joffre's 
object  was  to  cut  the  Menin-Ostend  road  and 
railroad. 

On  the  morning  of  the  19th,  though  Menin 
had  not  been  taken  by  the  7th  Infantry 
Division,  Roulers  was  in  the  possession  of  .the 
French,  and  French  cavalry  was  menacing  from 
Cortemarck  both  Lichtervelde  and  Thourout, 
and  the  African  horsemen  near  Couckelaere 
were  advancing  north-east  of  the  latter  town. 
Other  troops  were  coming  up  ;  the  I.  Corps 
(Sir  Douglas  Haig's)  was  detraining  between 
St.   Omer  and  Hazebrouck,   and  marching  on 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


443 


Ypres  ;  the  Lahore  Division  of  the  Indian 
Army  was  assembling  behind  the  IT.  Corps. 
The  British  monitors  and  destroyers,  com- 
manded by  Rear-Admiral  Hood,  had  made 
their  unexpected  appearance  off  the  coast, 
and  were  protecting  the  left  wing  of  the 
Belgians  along  the  Yser. 

On  their  side  the  Germans  had  been  heavily 
reinforced.  For  example,  three  Reserve  Corps 
(Nos.  26,  27,  and  28)  had  reached  Courtrai 
from  Germany.  Each  company  in  them  was 
composed  of  100  Volunteers — some  of  whom 
had  had  about  six  or  seven  weeks'  training — 
100  Reservists  (Landwehr  Reserve),  aged 
from  thirty-one  to  thirty-six,  and  40  Landwehr- 
Ersatz  Reserve  between  thirtj'-six  and  thirty- 
nine  years  of>  age.  The  officers  and  equipment 
(many  soldiers  had  obsolete  rifles)  might  be  of 
inferior  quality  but  the  men  were  full  of  enthu- 
siasm. An  inhabitant  of  Courtrai,  on  whom 
three  officers  —  respectively  an  evangelical 
clergyman,  a  doctor  of  classical  philology, 
and  a  commercial  traveller — were  quartered, 
relates  that,  in  answer  to  his  question  whether 
they  "  expected  to  meet  the  British,"  one  of 
his  "  guests,"  who  two  days  later  was  woiuided, 
replied  :  "  Oh,  yes,  we've  come  to  see  them  run  ; 
that's  all  their  long  legs  are  good  for.  We  shall 
be  in  Calais  before  the  end  of  the  week."  On 
the  19th  (Monday),  as  the  men  were  about  to 
march  to  the  field  of  battle,  their  officers 
announced  to  them  an  encouraging  piece  of 
news:  "Boys,"  they  said,  "you'll  be  glad  to 
hear  that  Paris  fell  into  our  h-ands  last  night." 
The  soldiers,  some  of  whom  danced  for  joy, 
sang  the  "  Waeht  ani  Rhein,"  and  a  song 
specially  composed  for  the  entry  of  the  Germans 
into  Paris.  One  of  them,  who  had  been  already 
in  the  fighting  line,  however,  observed  :  "  Un- 
fortunately, this  is  the  fourth  time  we  have 
had  the  fall  of  Paris  announced  to  us  !  ''  The 
soldiers  were  given  half-an-hour's  leave  to 
drink  to  the  triumph  of  the  Fatherland,  and 
under  the  influence  of  stimulants  such  sceptical 
utterances  fell  on  unappreciative  ears. 

Reinforced  on  their  centre  and  wings  the 
Germans  on  the  1 9th  took  the  offensive.  Issuing 
from  Ostend  and  exposing  themselves  to  the 
fire  of  the  British  flotilla,  they  assaulted 
Lombartzyde,  the  Belgian  advanced  post  in 
front  of  Nieuport.  Their  attacks  were  repulsed 
with  heavy  losses.  On  the  right  bank  of  the 
Yser  between  Nieuport  and  Dixmude  they  fell 
upon  the  Belgians  in  Keyem  and  Beerst. 
Keyem   held    out,  but   Beerst  was   taken   and 


THE    PERISCOPE. 
Seein}*  without  bein^  seen. 


444 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY     OF    THE    WAR. 


then  recaptured  by  the  French  Marines  and 
part  of  the  Belgian  5th  Division  from  Dixniud(\ 
Eventually  the  Allies  were  compelled  to  retire 
from  this  point  and  also  from  Keyem,  as  the 
Germans  had  captured  Roulers,  and  thus  were 
able  to  threaten  the  right  flank  of  the 
Allied  Arn"iy  on  the  Yser.  They  had  forced 
bac^k  the  French  cavalry  demonstratmg 
t(n\ai-{ls  the  Rouler.s-Thourout-Ostend  road, 
and  they  had  advanced  along  the  high  road 
wliich  branches  off  from  it  three  miles  north  of 
RouJers  to  Hooglede.  On  the  hill  of  Hooglede, 
German  artillery  had  been  posted,  and,  covered 
by  it,  the  German  infantry  descended  to  attack 
Roulers. 
From  the  Bruges-Coirrtrai  road  other  colmnns 


Menin  and  establish  himself  on  the  Roulers- 
Menin  road.  To  cover  the  advance  of  the  7th 
Infantry  Division  on  Menin,  Bj-ng's  Cavalry 
Division  (the  3rd),  placed  on  its  left,  had 
pushed  eastwards  from  the  line  Westroose- 
beke-Moorslede.     By   10  a.m.  the  7th  Ca\alry 


of  the  Germans  had  marched  on  that  town, 
which  was  shelled  from  Ardoye  and  from 
Iseghem.  By  nightfall  Roulers  was  once 
more  held  by  the  enemy  and  its  defenders  had 
withdrawn  to  Oostnieuwkerke.  The  African 
Cavalry  on  the  extreme  left  were  even  brovight 
back  behind  the  Ypres-Yser  canal. 

While  the  battle  of  Roulers  was  proceeding, 
another  attempt  was  being  made  by  Sir  Henry 
Rawlinson    with    the    IV.    Corps    to    capture 


BELGIAN    REFUGEES    LEAVE    THEIR 
COUNTRY. 

Top  picture  :  Crowds  at  Ghent  outside  the  Town 
Hall  waiting  to  obtain  passports  to  permit  them 
to  travel  to  England.  Centre:  Arrival  of  refugees 
at  the  Gare  du  Nord,  Paris.  Bottom  picture : 
Waiting  on  the  Quayside  at  Ostend. 

Brigade  was  in  touch  \\-ith  considerable  bodies 
of  the  enemy  and  had  to  fall  back.  North 
of  Moorslede  "  K  "  Battery  of  the  Royal 
Horse  Artillerj^,  which  had  been  attached 
to  the  brigade,  came  into  action  and  afforded 
it  great  assistance.  From  Moorslede  and 
Droogenbroodhoek  the  6th  Brigade,  aided  by 
"  C  "  Battery  and  jjrotected  by  the  7th  Brigade, 
liad  pushed  ahead  to  St.  Pieter  and  thence 
had  crossed  the  Roulers-Menin  road,  and  after 
a  brisk  action  occupied  Ledeghem  on  the 
Roulers-Menin  railroad  and  RoUeghemcappelle. 
In  the  meantime  the  7th  Infantry  Brigade 
from  the  edge  of  the  belt  of    woods  which  to 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


445 


■'^..- 


•^3   .1  ^i 


-..rfl'i^-iL-     .2P^i>,*<    .si'5^1^^-  V, 


THE    BELGIANS    IN    THE    TRENCHES. 
The  famous  7th  Regiment  of  the  Line. 


the  south  and  east  of  Ypres  stretches  from  the 
end  of  the  Mont-des-Cats  ridge  to  Zonnebeke 
had  been  heavily  engaged  with  the  enemy, 
who  at  Menin  and  Wervicq  had  crossed  to  the 
north  bank  of  the  Lys.  The  Division  made 
some  Uttle  progress,  and,  with  the  6th  Cavalry 
Brigade  in  Ledeghem  and  Rolleghemcappelle, 
there  was  a  prospect  that  Menin  and  Wervicq 
might  be  taken. 

But  the  German  victory  at  Roulers,  com- 
bined with  the  movement  of  the  enemy  from 
Courtrai  on  Ledeghem,  obliged  Sir  Henry 
Rawlinson  to  suspend  the  advance  of  Capper's 
Division.  The  7th  Cavalry  Brigade  had 
ha<l  to  be  withdrawn  to  the  high  ground  east 
of  Moorslede,  on  whicli  village  the  6th  Cavalry 
Brigade,  ptirsued  by  considerable  forces  from 
Courtrai,  was  being  gradually  brought  back 
from  Ledeghem  and  Rolleghemcappelle. 
Covered  by  the  7th  Cavalry  Brigade,  it  retired 
through  Moorslede,  and  at  nightfall  it  was 
in  billets  in  and  round  Poelcappelle,  south  of 
the  Forest  of  Houtluilst,  on  the  Hooglede- 
Westroosebeke  -  Ypres  highway.  The  7th 
Cavalry  Brigade,  mider  a  heavy  shell  fire, 
effected  its  retreat  to  Zonnebeke,  south  of 
Poelcappelle  on  the  Roulers-Ypres  railroad, 
and  French  cavalry  occupied  Passchendaele 
between  Zonnebeke  and  Westroosebeke.  The 
7th  Infantry  Brigade  by  sunset  was  in  its  old 
position  from  Zandvoorde  through  Kruiseik  to 
Gheluvelt,  and  to  the  north  of  that  village  ; 
its  left  was  prolonged  by  the  7th  Cavalry 
Brigade,  and,  beyond  Zonnebeke,  by  the 
French  as  far  as  Westroosebeke. 

Thus  the  Germans  on  the  19th  had  recovered 
most  of  the  Roulers-Dixmudo  road  and  all 
the  Menin-Roulers-Thourout-Ostend  road  and 
I'ailroad;  they  were  threatening  the  route  from 


Westroosebeke  to  Wervicq.  The  northern 
end  of  it  round  Westroosebeke  was  held  by 
the  French,  but  lower  down  towards  Wervicq, 
which  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Germans,  parties 
of  the  enemy  had  crossed  to  the  western  side 
of  the  road. 

It  was  under  such  critical  circumstances 
that  Sir  John  French  on  the  night  of  the  19th 
met  Sir  Douglas  Haig.  As,  after  Sir  John, 
Sir  Douglas  was  perhaps  the  most  important 
British  officer  who  took  part  in  the  battle  of 
Ypres,  it  may  not  here  be  out  of  place  to 
supply  the  reader  with  a  brief  biography  of 
the  soldier  whose  name  will  always  bo  asso- 
ciated with  that  of  the  I.  Corps. 

Three  years  the  junior  of  Sir  Horace  Smith- 
Dorrien — the  other  of  Sir  John-  French's 
principal  lieutenants  at  the  battles  of  Mons, 
Le  Cateau,  the  Marne,  the  Aisne  and  Ypres — 
Sir  Douglas  Haig  was  born  on  June  29,  1861. 
He  was  the  youngest  son  of  John  Haig,  J.P.,  of 
Cameronbridge,  Fife.  He  was  educated  at 
Clifton  College  and  at  Brasenose  College, 
Oxford.  In  1885  he  was  gazetted  to  the 
7th  Hussars,  and  was  Adjutant  of  that  regiment 
from  1888  to  1892,  and  obtained  his  captaincy 
in  1891.  During  this  time  he  showed  that  he 
was  not  only  a  studious  soldier  but  a  dashing 
polo  player.  From  April  28,  1894,  to  March  31. 
1895,  ho  was  A.D.C.  to  the  Inspector-General 
of  Cavalry,  and  then  passed  tlirough  tJio  Staff 
College. 

His  first  active  service  was  with  Lord 
Kitchener  in  the  River  War  of  1898.  Ho  waa 
present  at  the  battles  of  the  Atbara  and 
Omdurinan,  and  was  mentioned  in  dispatches. 
At  the  outbreak  of  the  South  African  War 
Major  Haig  was  sent  to  Natal,  and  served 
luider  Sir  John  French  at  the  actions  of  Filands- 

38—2 


446 


THE    TIMES    HISTOriY    OF    THE    WAR. 


laagte,  Rietfontein  and  Lombard's  Kop.  He 
was  on  the  Staff  of  Sir  John  French  during  the 
operations  round  Colesbcrg  at  the  beginning 
of  1900,  and  accompanied  him  on  his  cele- 
brated ride  to  Kimberley.  Later  he  took  part 
hi  the  battles  of  Paardeberg,  Poplar  Grove, 
Dreifontein.  He  was  present  at  the  actions 
of  Karee  Siding,  Vet  River  and  Zand  River,  at 
the  takings  of  Johannesburg  and  Pretoria,  at 
the  battle  of  Diamond  Hill,  and  in  the  advance 
to  Middslbxorg  and  Komati  Poort.  When 
I^itzinger  invaded  Cape  Colony  in  December, 
1900,  Lord  Kitchener  gave  Haig  the  command 
of  four  columns  sent  in  pursuit  of  the  Boer 
leader.  Haig  next  joined  in  the  abortive 
efforts  to  capture  De  Wet,  who  had  followed 
Kritzinger  and  Hertzog  into  the  Colony.  When 
De  Wet  and  Hertzog  returned  to  the  Orange 


PAY-DAY    ON    THE    BATTLEFIELD. 

German  Infantry  being  paid  in  notes. 

Free  State,  Haig  was  stationed  in  the  southern 
district,  from  which  he  was  again  transferred — 
in  April,  1901 — to  Cape  Colony.  During 
May  he  was  hunting  Kritzmger.  On  July  16, 
1901,  he  became  Lieutenant-Colonel  of  the 
17th  Lancers.  During  the  remainder  of 
the  war  he  assisted  French  in  clearing  Cape 
Colony. 

Haig  left  South  Africa  with  a  greatly  enhanced 
reputation,  and,  now  a  Colonel,  he  was  appointed 
by  Lord  Kitchener  Inspector-General  of  Cavalry 
in  India  (1903-6).  Promoted  a  Major-General 
in  1904,  he  returned  to  England  in  1906  to 
take  up  the  post  of  Director  of  Military  Training 
at  the  War  Office.  In  1907  he  became  Director 
of  Staff  Duties,  and  in  1909  Chief  of  the  Staff 
in  India.     Three  years  later  he  was  given  the 


eonunand    of    the    Aldershot    District,    which 
formed  practically  the  I.  Army  Corps. 

In  August,  1914,  Haig,  a  Lieutenant-Ccneral, 
proceeded  to  France  at  the  head  of  the  1. 
Corps.  He  brilliantly  commanded  the  right 
wing  at  the  battle  of  INIons  and  during  the 
subsequent  retreat,  and  at  the  battles  of  the 
Marne  and  Aisne  highly  distinguished  himself. 

To  what  point  in  the  battlefield  was  the 
I.  Corps  to  be  directed  ? 

The  bold  offensive  taken  by  French  and 
General  d'Urbal  had  failed.  The  Germans  at 
Keyem  and  Beerst  were  on  the  banks  of  the 
Yser.  Its  waters  are  carried  from  Dixmuda 
to  Nieuport  in  a  channel  raised  some  twenty- 
five  feet  or  so  above  the  fields  to  the  west, 
easy  for  the  Germans  to  hold  if  they  were  in 
possession  of  it  and  difficult  for  the  Allies  to 
retake.  To  the  west  of  the  banks  of  the  canal 
there  were  only  the  low  enabanlanent  of  the 
Dixmude-Nieuport  railway  and  a  number 
of  dykes  and  ditches  to  impede  the  enemy's 
advance  to  Furnes.  If  this  point  were  gained, 
Nieuport  and  Dixmude  would  become  un- 
tenable, and  the  left  of  the  Allies  romid 
Y^'pres  could  ba  attacked  by  the  Germans  in 
flank. 

Between  Dixmude  and  Ypros  the  position  was 
also  precarious.  Part  of  the  Dixmude-Roulers 
road  had  been  lost,  and,  south  of  it,  the  Forest 
of  Houthulst  was  being  reoccupied  by  the 
enemy. 

From  Dixmude  to  Bixschoote  the  Allied 
line  ran  along  the  Yser  Canal  to  the  old  and 
dismantled  Fort  de  Ivnocke,  then  along  the 
Y^perlee  Canal  towards  Y^pres.  At  Bixschoote 
the  Allied  line  st"uck  east  and  roughly 
formed  two  sides  of  a  triangle,  the  apex  of 
which  was  Westroosebeke,  eight  miles  or  so 
north-east  of  Ypres.  The  base  of  the  triangle 
might  be  said  to  be  formed  by  the  Yperlee 
Canal,  by  the  city  of  Ypres,  and  by  the  Y^pres- 
Comines  Canal  as  far  as  Houthem.  A  glance 
at  the  map  on  pages  460-1  will  sho^vthe  reader 
that  an  enemy  debouching  from  the  Forest 
of  Houthulst  could  attack  the  Bixschoote - 
Langemarck-Poelcappelle-Westroosebeke  side  of 
this  triangle,  which  was  about  7  miles  in  length. 

The  third  side  of  the  triangle  was  ten  miles 
long.  The  Allies,  as  related,  held  the  main 
road  from  Westroosebeke  through  Passchen- 
daele  to  the  neighbourhood  ox  Zonnebeke. 
From  Zonnebeke  their  lins  stretched  roimd 
the  woods  to  Gheluvelt  on  the  Menhi- Ypres 
road  ;     thence    it    proceeded    over    the    fields 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


447 


to  Ivruiseik  ;  from  which  point  it  bent  west- 
wards to  Zandvoorde,  and  from  Zandvoorde  it 
descended  to  Houthem  on  the  Comines-Ypres 
Canah  Behind  the  Hne  Zonnebeke -Houthem 
the  country,  which  is  of  a  roIUng  nature,  was 
in  parts  thickly  wooded.  North  of  Zonnebeke 
the  space  in  the  triangle  was  fairly  open,  though 
near  the  apex  there  were  clumps  of  trees. 
East  of  the  line  Zonnebeke-Westroosebeke, 
towards  Roulers,  there  were  more  woods. 

Keeping  in  mind  the  distance  to  which 
modern  guns  can  throw  shells,  it  is  obvious 
that  if  the  Germans  arranged  their  artillery 
in  a  crescent  from  the  north  of  Langemarck 
round  Westroosebeke  to  the  east  of  Zonnebeke, 
the  position  of  the  Allies  in  the  area  Zonnebeke- 
Westroosebeke-Langemarck  would  become  very 
perilous.  The  distance  between  Zonnebeke 
and  Langemarck,  which  villages  are  connected 
by  a  cross-road,  is  only  four  miles,  and  towards 
the  apex  of  the  triangle,  between  Poelcappelle 
and  Passchendaele,  the  trenches  of  the  defenders 
facing  north  and  east  respectively,  would  be 
scarcely  three  miles  apart. 

Thus  on  the  north  and  the  north-east  the  posi- 
tion of  the  Allies  was  a  bad  one,  but  on  the  east 
the  belt  of  woods  which  extends  south  of  Zonne- 
beke to  Gheluvelt  and  thence  to  HoUebeke  on 
the  canal  and  thereafter  to  the  eastern  spurs 
of  the  ridge  of  the  Mont-des-Cats,  opposed  a 
substantial  barrier  to  an  enemy  moving  on 
Ypres  from  the  north  bank  of  the  Lys  between 
Courtrai  and  Warneton.  Llost  of  the  trees, 
on  the  19th  October,  were  still  intact  and 
standing.  In  the  tops  of  some  of  them  sharp- 
shooters or  even  machine  guns  could  be  en- 
sconced, and  the  branches  here  and  there  to 
some  extent  protected  the  troops  from  shrapnel. 
The  trunks  of  the  trees  stopped  or  diminished 


tlie    velocity    of   rifle    bullets    and    the   foliage 
screened  men  and  guns  from  hostile  air-craft. 

On  the  eastern  side  of  the  Comines-Ypres 
Canal  the  main  approaches  to  Ypres  through 
the  woods  which,  be  it  noted,  were  not  con- 
tinuous, were — -beginning  from  the  canal — the 
road  from  Wervicq  on  the  Lys  by  Zandvoorde- 
Klein  Zillebeke,  and  Zillebeke,  that  from  Men  in 
through  Gheluvelt  and  Hooge,  and  one  from 
Courtrai  through  Ledeghem-Dadizeele-Terhantl- 
Becelaere  to  Gheluvelt  and  thence  to  Hoogi', 
From  the  north  the  woods  could  be  turned  by 
the  road  from  Roulers  by  Moorslede  and  Zoiuie- 
beke  to  Ypres. 

In  making  their  calculations.  Sir  John  Frencli 
and  Sir  Douglas  Haig  had  to  take  into  accoimt 
that  the  Germans,  who  held  all  the  crossings 
of  the  Lys  from  Frelinghien,  three  miles  north- 
east of  Armentieres,  to  Comines,  as  well  as 
those  from  Comines  to  Ghent,  might  attack 
Ypres  from  the  south. 

The  gap  between  Zandvoorde  through  the 
woods  to  the  eleven-mile-long  ridge — in  places 
two  miles  wide  and  some  hundreds  of  feet  higli 
— of  the  Mont-des-Cats,  which  from  Gode- 
waersvelde  to  Wytschaete  and  Messines  crosses 
the  plain  and  divides  the  Poperinghe-Ypres 
road  from  the  Lys,  was  filled  by  the  two 
Divisions  of  the  British  Cavalry  Corps.  These 
troops,  the  number  of  which  could  not  much 
have  exceeded  4,000  horses,  were  now  being 
used  principally  as  infantry.  Crossing  the  Lj-s 
at  Warneton  and  at  Comines  the  Germans 
could  advance  on  Ypres  either  through  HoUe 
beke  or  by  the  main  road  which  leads  from 
Warneton  to  St.  Eloi.  The  country  south  of 
the  line  Messines-HoUebeke  was  sparsely 
wooded.  A  cross  road  connected  St.  Eloi  with 
Vlamertinghe  between  Poperinghe  and  Ypres, 


AN    OLD   METHOD    REVIVED. 
British  troops  throwing  hand-grenades  from  the  trenches. 


448 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


and  if  St.  Eloi,  two  miles  south  of  Ypres,  were 
captured,  not  only  could  that  city,  which  lies 
in  a  hollow,  be  assaulted,  but  all  the  com- 
munications of  the  Allies  through  Ypres  south 
of  the  Ypres-Poperinghe  high  road  might  be 
cut  and  the  ridge  of  the  Mont-des-Cats  attacked 
from  the  north. 

The  ridge  was  of  cardinal  unportance  to  the 
Allies.  If  it  were  occupied,  Ypres,  Vlamer- 
tinghe  and  Poperinghe  must  be  abandoned, 
and  the  line  of  the  Ypres-Dixmude-Nieuport 
Canal  could  not  be  maintained.  From  the  ridge 
of  the  Mont-des-Cats  the  German  artillery 
would  sweep  the  plain  on  both  sides,  and, 
descending  from  the  ridge,  the  German 
infantry  would  be  'at  Godewaersvelde  on  the 
Hazebrouck-Poperinghe-Ypres  railroad  and  at 
Bailleul  on  the  Hazebrouck-Armentieres  rail- 
way. These  two  lines  were,  with  the  Dunkirk- 
Furnes-Dixmude  railroad,  the  sole  railways 
going  eastward  from  the  line  Dunkirk-Haze- 
brouck-Merville.     The   ridge   of  the   Mont-des- 


BELGIAN    PRISONERS    DIGGING 

TRENCHES,    GUARDED   BY 

GERMAN    SOLDIERS. 

Inset  :    German  observation  post  on  top  of  a 
haystack. 

Cats  was  thus  the  key  to  the  Allied  position 
north  of  the  Lys. 

At  its  eastern  end,  as  already  mentioned, 
nestled  on  high  ground  the  village  of  Wyt- 
schaete  and,  south  of  it,  the  village  of 
Messines.  Below  Messines  and  flowing  from  the 
west  along  the  base  of  the  ridge  of  the  INIont- 
des-Cats  was  the  little  river  Douve.  Beyond 
it  rose  Hill  63,  a  knoll  on  a  low  ridge  wliich 
separated  the  Douve  from  the  Lys.  On  the 
other  side  of  this  ridge  and  divided  by  th& 
Ypres  -  St.  Eloi  -  Wytschaete  -  Messines  -  Ploeg  - 
steert-Armentieres  chaussee  was  the  Ploeg - 
steert  wood,  called  by  the  British  troop:* 
"  Plug  Street,"  a  straggling  patch  of  woodland 
some  3,000  yards  long  by  1,500  wide.  Tlie 
ground  under  the  trees  was  a  treacherous  bog, 
the  roads  scarcely  passable  on  account  of  mud. 

The  right  flank  of  the  Cavalry  Corps  rested 
on  tlie  north-eastern  end  of  the  wood,  a  detach- 
ment holding  the  hamlet  of  St.  Yves.  Along 
the  eastern  and  the  south-eastern  edges  of  the 
Bois  de  Ploegsteert  were  entrenched  units  of 
the  left  wing  of  the  III.  Corps.  Le  Gheir, 
which  is  at  the  south-eastern  corner  of  the 
wood,  was  occupied  by  the  British.  Tlie 
remainder  of  the  III.  Corps  north  of  the  Lys 
was  disposed  between  Le  Gheir  and  the  bank 
of  the  ri\er  400  yards  south  of  Frelingliien- 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


449 


BELGIAN    ARMY    IN    THE    FIELD. 

After  a  fortnight's  fighting  the  Belgians 

have  been  relieved  and  are 

going  back  for  a  rest. 

Inset  :  A  message  by  telephone. 

From  the  western  outskirts  of  Frelinghien 
the  front  of  the  III.  Corps  cxirved  round 
Armentieres  to  Radinghem,  a  village  on  the 
long,  low  ridge  which  divides  the  flat  and 
usually  waterlogged  plain  south  of  the  Lys 
from  the  La  Bassee-Lille  Canal.  On  it  are 
the  villages  of  Radinghem,  Fromelles,  Aubers, 
Violaines,  Givenchy.  The  ridge  is  south  of 
Givenchy  traversed  by  the  La  Bassee-Lille 
Canal  at  Cuinchy.  It  extends  beyond  Cuinchy 
to  Vermelles. 

Conneau's  Cavalry  Corps  and,  to  its  west, 
the  II.  Corps,  were  disposed  between  Radinghem 
and  Givenchy.  The  II.  Corps  had  captured 
Givenchy,  Violaines,  Aubers,  and  HerUes,  and 
Major  Daniell  with  the  Royal  Irish  Regiment 
had  just  stormed  the  village  of  Le  Pilly. 

South  of  the  La  Bassee-Lille  Canal  the  right 
wing  of  the  II.  Corps  joined  on  to  the  left 
wing  of  General  de  Maud'huy's  Army. 

The  German  forces  operating  against  this 
fifty  or  so  miles  long  line  of  the  Allies  between  the 
sea  and  La  Bassee  were  in  greatly  superior 
numbers.  The  II.  Corps  and  Conneau's  Cavalry 
Corps  had  been  originally  opposed  by  a  part 
of  the  14th  German  Corps,  four  Cavalry 
Divisions  and  several  battalions  of  Jaegers,  but 


from  the  19th  to  the  31st  the  enemy  here  were 
reinforced  by  the  remainder  of  the  14th  Corps, 
by  a  Division  of  the  7th  Corps,  and  by  a 
brigade  of  the  3rd  Corps.  The  British  III. 
Corps,  which  was  astride  the  Lys,  holding  a 
line  from  thirteen  to  fifteen  miles  long,  was  also 
outnumbered  and  outgunned.  On  the  18th 
Sir  John  French  had  directed  its  corrunander. 
General  Pulteney,  to  drive  the  enemy  eastward 
towards  Lille  and  then  to  assist  the  Cavalr\' 
Corps  to  cross  the  Lys  east  of  Frelinghien. 
Confronted  by  the  19th  Saxon  Corps,  at  least 
one  Division  of  the  7th  Corps,  and  three  or  four 
Divisions  of  Cavalry,  and  the  German  troop?- 
being  constantly  reinforced  from  Lille,  the 
Cavalry  Corps  and  III.  Corps  foimd  themselves 
unable  to  accomplish  the  task  set  them.  The 
road  from  Lille  to  Frelinghien  remained  in 
the  German  possession,  as  also  the  high  road 
which  from  Lille  passes  Fort  Carnot  and  crosses 
the  Lys  at  Pont  Rouge  and  by  Warneton  and 
Wervicq  goes  to  Menin.     Behind  that  road  in 


450 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


the  section  south  of  the  Lys  flowed  the  canalised 
river  Deule  to  Deulemont,  where  it  entered 
the  Lys.  Protected  on  his  left  flank  by  the 
Deule  and  by  Forts  Carnot  and  Englos,  the 
Crown  Prince  of  Bavaria  could  throw  his 
troops  across  the  Lys  to  attack  Le  Gheir,  the 
wood  of  Ploegsteert,  Messines,  Wytschaete, 
St.  Eloi,  Hollebeke,  Zandvoorde.  Gheluvelt, 
and  Zonnebeke. 

The  left  wing  of  the  Allies — in  a  straight 
line  over  120  miles  long — was  now  perpendicular 
to  the  centre  from  Compiegne  to  Verdun, 
which  centre — about  the  same  length — \\as 
nearly  perpendicular  to  a  front  of  similar 
dimensions  from  Verdun  to  Belfort.  \^'^ith 
the  railroads  and  motor  traction  at  their  dis- 
posal the  German  leaders  could  shift  their 
troops  across  the  125  miles  separating  Lille 
from  Verdun  more  quickly  than  Joffre  could 
transfer  his  from  the  neighbourhood  of  Lille 
to  the  great  fortified  camp  which  barred  the 
advance  of  German  Armies  from  Metz  on 
Paris. 

For  the  moment,  then.  Sir  John  French 
and  Sir  Douglas  Haig  could  not  count  on  any 
immediate  assistance  from  the  French.  Between 
the  slag  heaps  near  La  Bassee  and  the  seventv 


feet  or  so  wide  Lys,  running  through  a  shallow 
depression  in  the  plain,  they  could  oppose  to 
the  Germans  only  the  II.  Corps,  Conneaus 
Cavalry  Corps,  and  a  part  of  the  III.  Corps  ; 
from  the  Lys  northwards  to  the  Bois  de 
Ploegsteert  the  remainder  of  the  III.  Corps, 
thence  to  Zandvoorde  the  Cavalry  Corps ; 
from  Zandvoorde  to  Gheluvelt  on  the  Ypres- 
Menin  road,  and  from  Gheluvelt  to  Zonnebeke, 
the  7th  Infantry  Division,  with  the  7th  Cavalry 
Brigade  round  Zonnebeke.  Between  Zonne- 
beke and  Westroosebeke  and  south-west- 
ward to  Poelcappelle  detachments  of  General 
d'Urbal's  Armj%  which  then  consisted  of  no 
more  than  two  Territorial  Divisions  and  four 
Cavalry  Divisions,  with  the  British  6th 
Cavalry  Brigade,  presented  a  thin  line  to 
the  Germans  on  the  north  and  north-east 
of  Ypres.  From  Poelcappelle  to  Bixschoote 
some  French  Cavalry  and  Territorials,  whose 
left  extended  to  the  junction  of  the  Yperlee 
Canal  with  the  Yser,  and,  along  the  Yser  to 
Dixmude,  mounted  African  troops  and  part 
of  the  Fifth  Belgian  Division  had  to  defend  a 
line  of  fifteen  miles.  Roixnd  and  in  Dixmude, 
which  could  be  attacked  from  three  sides, 
were,  indeed,  the  rest  of  this  Division  and  the 


THE    BRITISH    HEADQUARTERS    STAFF. 
Sir  John  French  and  his  Staflf  passing  through  a  French  village  near  the  Belgian  frontier. 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAB. 


451 


A    BRITISH    SCOUT. 
On  the  look-out  from  the  loft  of  a  wrecked  farmhouse. 


6,000  Marines  of  Ronarc'h.  But  only  the 
4th  and  1st  Belgian  Divisions  held  the  Yser 
Canal  to  the  region  of  Nieuport.  The  2nd 
Belgian  Division,  assisted  by  a  detachment 
of  British  sailors  from  the  monitor  Severn, 
under  Lieut.  E.  S.  Wise,  with  some  machine 
guns,  was  posted  in  and  to  the  east  of  Nieu- 
port. It  was  flanked  by  the  British  flotilla 
moving  along  the  coast  from  Nieuport  Bains 
to  Ostend. 

With  the  exception  of  the  Lahore  Division, 
which  liad  never  before  faced  European 
troops,  and  the  I.  Corps,  there  were  practically 
no  reserves  behind  the  fifty  mile  or  so  long  line 
of  battle.  The  Belgian  troops  were  exhausted 
by  over  two  months'  fighting ;  they  were 
dispirited  by  the  loss  of  Liege,  Brussels,  Namur, 
Antwerp,  Ghent,  Bruges,  and  Ostend.  The 
handful  of  French  Marines  were  mostly  raw 
troops,  and  the  remainder  of  the  Allied  Army 
was  becoming  stale  from  constant  marching 
and  entrenching  and  battling  against  larger 
numbers  and  predominating  artillery. 

To  quote  his  own  words.  Sir  John  French 
' '  knew  that  the  enemy  were  by  this  time  in 
greatly  superior  strength  on  the  Lys,  and  that 
the  II.,  III.,  Cavalry,  and  IV.  Corps  were 
holding  a  much  wider  front  than  their  numbers 
and  strength  warranted,  and  ...  it  would 
have  appeared  wise  to  throw  the  I.  Corps 
in  to  strengthen  the  line."  But  ho  had  already 
decided  to  move  Sir  Douglas  Haig's  Corps  to 


the  north  of  Ypres  in  order  to  relieve  the 
German  pressure  on  the  Yser.  The  I.  Corps 
was  to  advance  through  Ypres  on  Thourout 
and  through  Thourout  on  Bruges,  At  Thourout 
and  Bruges  it  would  be  athwart  the  com- 
munications of  the  Duke  of  Wvu-temberg's 
Army,  wliich,  if  Bruges  were  occupied,  would 
have  to  evacuate  the  coast  line  from  Ostend 
to  the  Dutch  frontier.  Then,  if  it  were  feasible, 
Sir  Douglas  was  to  drive  the  Germans  towards 
Ghent. 

This  bold  and,  as  it  turned  out,  unrealizable 
project  was  based  primarily  on  the  considera- 
tion that  Sir  Douglas,  "  would  probably  not 
be  opposed  north  of  Ypres  by  much  more  than 
the  3rd  Reserve  Corps,"  which  had  suffered 
considerably,  and  by  "  one  or  two  Land\\'ehr 
Divisions."  The  leading  idea  was  to  move 
the  extreme  left  of  the  Allied  Armies  to  the 
north  bank  of  the  Lys  from  Frelinghien  to 
Ghent. 

De  Mitry's  Cavalry  was  to  operate  on  the  left 
wing  of  the  I.  Corps.  Byng's  Cavalrj-  was  to 
be  on  Haig's  right.  The  7th  Infantry  Division 
would,  according  to  circmnstances,  either 
remain  on  the  defensive  round  the  woods  to 
the  east  of  Ypres  or  support  the  advance  to 
the  north. 

The  Cavalry  Corps  from  Zandvoordo  to  the 
wood  of  Ploegsteert,  and  the  III.  Corps  from 
Le  Gheir  across  the  Lys  to  the  Radinghom- 
Givenchy     ridge.     Conneau's     Cavalry     Corps, 


452 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


THE    BRITISH    TROOPS    IN    FARMHOUSES. 
An  old   deserted    farmhouse    near   the    British    trenches,    which    has    been    converted    into    billets    for    the 
troops,  who  are  here  seen  entering  the  loft.     On    the  right  :  A   sergeants'  mess   in   a   ruined   farmhouse. 

The  remnants  of  the  wall  are  strengthened  with  sandbags. 


I 


and  the  II.  Corps  (Smith-Dorrien's)  were 
ordered  to  reniain  on  the  defensive. 

"  I  fully  realized,"  says  Sir  John  French, 
"  the  difficult  task  which  lay  before  us,  and  tho 
onerous  role  which  the  British  Army  was  called 
upon  to  fulfil.  .  .  .  No  more  arduous  task 
has  ever  been  assigned  to  British  soldiers ; 
and  in  all  their  splendid  history  there  is  no 
instance  of  their  having  answered  so  mag- 
nificently to  the  desperate  calls  which  of 
necessity  were  made  upon  them." 

Sir  John  French  relied  on  the  qualities  of 
the  British  troops ;  he  also  reckoned  that 
if  Sir  Douglas  Haig  wedged  his  Corps  between 


the  Armies  of  the  Duke  of  Wurtemberg  and 
the  Crown  Prince  of  Bavaria,  he  would  be 
rapidly  reinforced  by  French  troops.  Later, 
it  may  be  mentioned,  Foch  transported  by 
automobile  some  70,000  men  to  the  region  of 
Ypres. 

Sir  Douglas  Haig  was  unable  to  carry  out 
Sir  Jolm's  instructions.  The  news  that  the 
British  Expeditionary  Force  with  General 
d'Urbal's  skeleton  Army  was  trying  to  wrest 
from  him  his  newly  acquired  coast  line  had  the 
same  effect  on  the  Kaiser  that  Sir  Joiin  Moore's 
march  on  Burgos  had  had  on  Napoleon  in  1808. 
The  "  little  armv,"  which  he  could  no  longer 


THE    BRITISH    ARMY'S    LIFE-LINE. 
Engineers  laying  a  cable-line. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


463 


THE    GERMANS    IN    BELGIUM. 

Repairing  a  fracture  in  a  cable.      On  the  right  is  seen  a  German  soldier  in  his   "  hotel." 


regard  as  "  contemptible,"  might  be  annihi- 
lated, and,  counting  on  the  psychological 
disturbance  in  the  British  Isles  and  outside 
Europe  which  would  be  caused  by  a  decisive 
victory  over  the  British  Army,  the  Kaiser  and 
FalkenhajTi  unhesitatingly  decided  to  throw 
north  of  the  Lys  every  man  and  gun  they 
could  possibly  spare.  The  result  was  that  a 
British  offensive  on  Thourout,  Bruges,  and 
Ghent  became  impossible. 

The  next  day  (October  20)  the  left  wing  of 
the  I.  Corps  reached  Elverdinghe  (south  of 
the  Zuydschoote-Bixschoote  bridge  over  the 
Yperlee  Canal,  and  on  the  road  from  Ypres  to 
Furnes)  ;   the  centre  traversed  Ypres  ;   and  the 


right  wing  stretched  beyond  Zonnebeke  to 
the  Westroosebeke-Wervicq  road.  From  Elver- 
dinghe troops  could  be  rapidly  transported 
either  to  the  Noordschote  bridge  over  the 
Yperlee  Canal  or  to  the  support  of  the  Belgians 
and  French  Marines  at  Dixmude. 

An  anonymous  officer  of  the  I.  Corps  in 
Blackwood's  Magazine  for  March,  1915,  has 
described  the  march  of  his  regiment  to  Ypres 
on  October  20.  "At  about  10.30,"  he  says, 
"  we  crossed  the  Belgian  frontier  for  the  second 
time.  .  .  .  One  could  not  help  noticing  as  one 
went  along  how  much  more  like  England  this 
part  of  the  country  was  than  any  we  had  passed 
through  as  yet.     Except  for  the  large  number 


BRITISH    HEAVY    GUNS. 
A  6-in.  gun  being  got  into  position.     These  guns  have  done  good  work  ia 

Belgium. 


38-3 


454 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


of  windmills  scattered  all  over  the  country  on 
every  little  knoll,  one  might  have  been  at 
home."  At  12.30  the  regiment  to  which  this 
officer  was  attached  reached  the  city,  where  it 
remained  till  4.55  a.m.  on  the  21st.  Ypres  was 
full  of  French  troops.  A  French  gminer,  who 
during  dinner  visited  some  of  the  officers, 
appeared  to  thinlc  that  "  the  whole  of  the 
German  Army  "  was  in  front  of  the  Allies. 

This  was,  of  course,  an  exaggeration,  but 
that  the  Germans  were  in  superior  numbers 
hiad  been  proved  by  the  day's  events.  Before 
the  I.  Corps  could  reach  the  fighting  line  the 
Duke  of  Wurtemberg  struck  his  hardest.  Dis- 
regarding the  shells  of  the  British  flotilla, 
on  the  20th  he  pressed  his  attack  along  the 
coast.  In  the  morning  the  farm  of  Bam- 
berg was  taken  by  the  enemy ;  it  was  re- 
captured by  the  Belgians,  but  at  nightfall  had 
to  be  abandoned.  All  the  villages  held  by  the 
Belgians  to  the  east  of  the  Yser  \\cre  in  the 
hands  of  the  Germans,  who  were  now  pre- 
parmg  to  cross   the  canal.      Heavy   howitzers 


THE    FRENCH    ARMY    IN    BELGIUM. 

Senegalese  troops  in  the  streets  of  Furnes. 

Inset :  German  prisoners  at  Furnes. 

had  been  brought  up  to  shell  Dixmude,  and 
Rear-Admiral  Ronarc'h's  Marines  and  General 
]\Teyser's  Belgian  Brigade  with  difficulty  re- 
sisted several  desperate  assaults  on  the  town. 
South  of  Dixmude  the  enemy  firmly  estab- 
lished himself  in  the  Forest  of  Houthulst,  and 
was  preparing  to  cross  the  Yperlee  Canal. 

In  the  triangle  Bixschoote-Westroosebeke- 
Houthem  there  had  been  severe  fighting. 
BjTig's  Cavalry  Dixasion  had  taken  up  a 
defensive  position  supporting  the  French 
between  Westroosebeke  and  Passchendaele. 
Desultory  firing  commenced  about  8  a.m.  and 
was  succeeded  by  an  artillery  duel  until  noon. 
The  Germans  then  attacked  the  French  and 
drove  them  south  and  west  of  the  \\'estroose- 
beke-Wervicq  high  road.  A  portion  fell  back 
down  the  Westroosebeke-Ypres  road  to  Poel- 
cappelle,  at  which  village  the  main  road  from 
Dixmude  through  the  Forest  of  Houthulst 
ends.  Later  in  the  afternoon  these  troops, 
■«ho  were  heavily  shelled  in  Poelcappelle,  were 
withdrawn  still  farther.  Their  retreat  involved 
that  of  Byng's  Cavalry  Division,  the  left  of 
^\hich  was  swung  back  to  the  Langemarck- 
Zonnebeke  road. 

Thus  the  eastern  end  of  the  triangle  Bix- 
schoote-Westroosebeke-Houthem  had  been  lost. 
On  the  side  of  the  triangle  Westroosebeke- 
Houthem  the  enemy,  besides  driving  the  Allies 
off  most  of  the  Westroosebeke-Wervicq  road 
up  to  the  environs  of  Zonnebeke,  had  repulsed 
the    advance    of    the    21st    Brigade    (General 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


455 


Watts)  from  Gheluvelt  through  and  beyond 
Becelaere.  At  12.30  p.m.  the  General,  with 
Captain  Drysdale  and  Mr.  Underwood,  pro- 
ceeded through  Becelaere.  "  As  we  got  up  to 
the  firing  line  the  shells  started  raining  over  the 
ridge  where  the  Scots  Fusiliers,  the  Wiltshires 
and  the  Bedfords  were  advancing."  So  hot 
was  the  fire  that  the  machine  gun  section 
was  called  in  and  the  General,  who  had  been 
nearly  killed  by  a  shell,  sought  a  less-exposed 
position.  "  As  we  rounded  the  church,  shells 
were  raining  down  into  the  village,  and  one 
carried  away  the  arm  of  a  Wiltshire  who  was 
standing  where  we  had  stood  only  two  minutes 
before."  The  engagement  continued  till 
7.30  p.m.  "In  the  distance  we  could  see 
Becelaere  in  flames,  the  church  steeple  standing 
out  against  the  red  glare." 

While  the  7th  Infantry  Division  on  the  edge 
of  the  woods  between  Zonnebeke  tlirough 
Gheluvelt  to  Zandvoorde  was  resisting  the 
Germans  who  had  poured  out  of  Courtrai, 
Menin  and  Wervicq,  the  Cavalry  Corps  down 
both  sides  of  the  Comines-Ypres  Canal  and 
away  to  the  right  had  been  making  another 
effort  to  secure  the  line  of  the  Lys  from  Wervicq 
to  Pont  Rouge,  which  is  opposite  Le  Gheir. 
But  the  attempt  had  failed,  and  the  1st  Cavalry 
Division  had  to  retire  to  the  line  St.  Yves- 
Messines,  the  2nd  Cavalry  Division  to  that  of 
Messines  -  Garde  Dieu  -  Houthein  -  Kortewilde. 
By  nightfall  a  body  of  the  enemy  faced  the 
south-eastern  spur  of  the  ridge  of  the  Mont- 
des-Cats  and  other  bodies  were  advancing  up 
the  roads  from  Warneton  towards  St.  Eloi  and 
from  Comines  towards  HoUebeke. 

We  have  been  used  as  infantry  [writes  an  oflicer  of  the 
4th  Dragoon  Guards,,  present  at  this  fighting]  and  armed 
■with  rifles,  bayonets  and  spades.  The  spades  are  very 
necessary,  as  it  is  impossible  to  hold  a  position  for  any 
length  of  time  without  digging  oneself  in.  On  the  20th 
iny  squadron  was  in  reserve  in  a  big  forest,  and  orders 
oame  about  10  a.m.  to  support  our  infantry  advanced 
line.  We  left  our  horses  and  went  on  two  miles,  where 
I  halted  the  squadron  under  cover  and  walked  on  to 
I'sconnoitre. 

Captain  Hornby  had  gone  on  just  ahead  of  me  with  his 
squadron,  and  I  found  him  with  some  of  his  men  lying 
down  behind  a  hedgerow.  A  company  of  Inniskilling 
Fusiliers  were  100  yards  on  in  front  lying  in  the  open 
and  firing  on  the  enemy  about  400  yards  in  front  and 
slowly  crawling  on.  Our  guns  were  firing  hard  from 
behind  the  wood,  but  shells  started  dropping  short  right 
into  the  Inniskillings.  After  sticking  it  for  a  bit  they 
got  \ip  to  come  back,  and  the  Gennans  opened  on  them 
with  two  maxims.  They  lost  some  men  and  came  back 
behind  our  lines.  By  then  1  had  some  of  my  squadron 
up. 

Captain  Hornby  was  badly  hit  ;  his  subaltern  Sharp 
got  four  maxim  bullets  in  the  arm,  and  some  of  their 
men  wore  killed  and  wounded.  I'oor  Charles  Hornby 
fell  right  in  the  open,  and  we  had  to  get   him  back  to 


cover  as  best  we  could.  We  stuck  to  our  hedge,  and 
advanced  again  to  almost  where  the  InnLskillings  had 
been,  and  as  soon  as  it  got  dark  we  dug.  We  dug  all 
night  and  fortified  a  farmhouse,  and  by  the  morning 
we  had  a  jolly  strong  position  in  the  middle  of  the 
infantry  line.  They  didn't  have  enough  men  to  oscupy 
it  themselves.* 

Advanced  posts  of  the  12th  Brigade  of 
the  4th  Division  of  the  III.  Corps  had  been 
forced  to  retire  between  the  Ploegsteert  Wood 
and  the  Lys,  and  at  dusk  it  was  evident  that 
the  enemy  were  preparing  to  attack  Le  Gheir 
and  the  wood.  With  Le  Gheir  in  the 
German  possession  the  right  of  the  1st  Cavalry 
Division  at  St.  Yves  might  be  turned. 

South  of  the  Lys  theGermans  from  Lille  had  on 
the  20th  been  battering  at  the  thin  line  of  British 
infantry  and  French  cavalry  strung  out  from 
the  west  of  Frelinghien  to  Givenchy.  The  aim 
of  the  Germans  was  to  recover  Armentieres  and 
the  RadingheiTi-Givenchy  ridge. 

A  British  soldier,  wounded  that  day  in  the 
trenches  near  Armentieres,  told  a  Times' 
Correspondent  that,  at  daybreak,  a  deadly  fire 
had  opened  upon  the  trench  in  which  he  lay 

*  This  narrative  was  published  in  the  Daily  Telef/raph. 


THE    KING    OF    THE    BELGIANS 

Chatting  with  one  of  the  French  Geuerai  Staff  at 

Market  Square,  Furnes. 


456 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


BRIG.-GEN.    E.    S.   BULFIN,   C.V.O.,  D.S.O. 

with  his  company.  It  was  an  enfilading  fire. 
The  enemy  had  crept  up  very  close  in  the  dark- 
ness to  the  right  of  the  Une.  One  btillet 
destroyed  the  back  sight  of  this  soldier's  rifle  ; 
another  struck  hrm  in  the  head.  The  men  in 
the  trenches  were  helpless,  and  the  enemy 
attacked  them  with  the  bayonet.  They  sur- 
rendered, but  both  friend  and  foe  were  for 
fourteen  hours  shelled  by  the  artillery  from 
both  sides.  Then  the  trench  was  retaken  by  the 
British  and  the  Germans  made  prLsoners. 

South  of  Radinghem,  and  three-and-a-half 
mUes  east  of  Neuve  Chapelle,  the  II.  Corps  had 
on  the  20th  suffered  a  reverse.  The  Royal 
Irish  Regiment  had  lost  heavily  in  prisoners 
at  Le  Pilly. 

In  view  of  the  results  of  the  day's  fighting, 
of  the  progress  made  by  the  Germans  to  the 
east  of  the  Yser,  of  their  victorious  advance 
into  the  triangle  Bixschoote-Westroosebeke- 
Houthem,  of  their  successful  attacks  on  the 
Cavalry  Corps  and  III.  Corps  between  Houthem 
and  the  wood  of  Ploegsteert,  and  of  their 
recapture  of  Le  Pilly,  the  plan  formed  by  Sir 
John  French  of  driving  a  wedge  between  the 
Duke  of  Wurtemberg's  and  the  Crown  Prince 
of  Bavaria's  Armies  was  no  longer  feasible. 
Nevertheless,  the  I.  Corps  and  the  Lahore 
Jbivision  might  be  able  to  recover  the  ground 


lost  on  the  20th.  General  JofTre  had  arrived 
in  Flanders,  and  during  the  21st  Sir  John 
French  saw  him.  Joffre  assured  Sir  John 
that  he  was  bringing  up  the  9th  French 
Array  Corps  to  Ypres,  and  that  more  French 
troops  would  follow  it.  He,  like  Sir  John, 
was  full  of  confidence.  He  told  the  British 
GeneraUssimo  that  it  wais  his  intention  on  the 
24th  to  attack  the  Germans  and  drive  them 
eastwards. 

On  Wednesday  the  21st  the  Germans  once 
more  attacked  the  long,  thin  line  of  the 
Allies. 

The  enemy  crossed  the  Yser  Canal  and 
tried  to  take  Schoorebakke,  one  of  the 
vulnerable  spots  in  the  Belgian  centre.  They 
were  beaten  back,  leaving  behind  them  lines 
of  dead  and  wounded.  Dixmude  was  furiously 
bombarded  by  heavy  howitzers,  and  no  fewer 
than  eight  separate  assaults  launched  by  the 
Duke  of  Wurtemberg  against  the  town  so 
bravely  defended  by  the  French  IMarines  and 
the  Belgians.  At  nightfall  the  Yser,  south  of 
Dixmude,  had  been  temporarily  passed  by 
the  enemy,  but  they  had  not  been  able  ta 
maintain  their  hold  on  the  west  bank. 

Farther  south,  and  north  and  east  of  Ypres, 
it  was  the  Allies  who  had  at  first  attacked.  With 
De  Mitry's  Cavalry  and  Bidon's  Territorials  on 
his  left,  and  Byng's  Cavalry  on  his  right.  Sir 
Douglas  Haig  had  directed  the  I.  Corps  to  retake 
Poelcappelle  and  Passchendaele,  and  the  ground 
between  those  villages.  The  attack  was  some- 
what delayed  through  the  roads  being  blocked, 
but  it  progressed  favourably  in  face  of  severe 
opposition,  often  necessitating  the  use  of  the 
bayonet.  The  26th  Reserve  Corps  round 
Passchendaele  replied  by  a  violent  counter- 
attack, which  was  repulsed  with  heavy  loss, 
and  up  to  2  p.m.  it  looked  as  if  Sir  Douglas 
Haig  would  achieve  his  object.  The  enemy 
from  the  Forest  of  Houthulst  were,  indeed, 
threatening  his  left,  but  it  was  not  until  De 
Mitry  was  ordered,  it  seems  by  Joffre,  to  with- 
draw his  cavalry  behind  the  Yperlee-Yser 
Canal  that  Sir  Douglas  was  obliged  to  suspend 
his  advance.  This  retrograde  movement  of  De 
Mitry  was  presumably  due  to  the  impression 
created  on  the  Allied  Commander-in-Chief  by 
the  frantic  efforts  of  the  Germans  to  cross  into 
the  loop  of  the  Yser,  and  pass  the  canal  at 
Dixmude,  and  between  Dixmude  and  Fort  de 
Knocke.  The  42nd  French'  Division  had  not 
yet  detrained  at  Furnes,  and  the  only  reserves 
Joffre  could  tlu-ow  into  the  battle  of  the  Yser 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


457 


were     the    16th    Chasseurs     and    the    African 
Cavalry  stationed  near  Loo. 

The  I.  Corps,  supported  by  General  Bidon's 
Territorials,  now  halted  on  the  line  Bixschoote- 
Langemarck  -  St.  Julien  -  Zonnebeke.  On  its 
left  the  Corps  faced  the  German  23rd,  in  the 
centre  the  26th  Corps, 

Meantime,  the  27th  Corps  had  been  pushed 
against  the  7th  Infantry  Division.  The  22nd 
Infantry  Brigade,  commanded  by  General 
Lawford,  was  attacked  by  these  newly  raised 
troops  with  frenzied  zeal.  Its  left  flank,  near 
Zonnebeke,  was  in  great  danger,  and  Byng  sent 
the  7th  Cavalry  Brigade  to  its  support. 

Thus  reinforced,  Lawford  managed  to  main- 
tain himself  round  Zonnebeke.  To  the  south, 
between  Zonnebeke  and  Zandvoorde,  the  21st 
and  20th  Infantry  Brigades  were  resisting  the 
efforts  of  the  Germans  from  the  neighbourhood 
of  Becelaere  to  gain  the  fringe  of  the  woods  to 
the  east  of  Ypres.  Apprised  of  the  formidable 
attack  on  the  7th  Infantry  Division,  Sir 
Douglas  Haig  had  early  ordered  his  reserves 
to  be  halted  on  the  north-eastern  outskirts  of 
Ypres. 

It  has  been  seen  that  Byng  had  had  to  rein- 
force with  his  7th  Brigade  the  left  of  the  7th 
Infantry  Division  roimd  Zonnebeke.  At  1.30 
p.m.  it  was  reported  to  him  that  the  left  of 
General  Gough's  Cavalry  Division  (the  2nd) 
had  been  pierced  south  of  Zandvoorde.  Byng 
promptly  dispatched  his  6th  Brigade  to  fill  the 
gap  ;  it  rode  over  and  occupied  the  crossings  of 
the  Comines- Ypres  Canal,  north  of  Hollebeke. 


Later  in  the  evening  the  brigade  moved  to  its 
left  between  Zandvoorde  and  the  canal,  near 
the  Chateau  de  Hollebeke ;  the  7th  Cavalry 
Brigade,  wliich  had  been  relieved  at  Zonne- 
beke by  battalions  of  the  I.  Corps,  rode  to  the 
west  of  the  canal,  and  was  stationed  to  the 
west  of  Hollebeke  at  St.  Eloi  and  Voomiezeele. 
The  use  made  by  Sir  John  French  and  his 
subordinates  of  the  cavalry  was  on  tliis  day 
no  less  masterly  than  it  had  been  during  the 
retreat  from  Mons.  The  lessons  which 
French  had  learnt  at  Colesberg  had  not  been 
forgotten. 

By  sunset  the  2nd  Cavalry  Division,  which  at 
4  p.m.  had  been  violently  attacked,  was  dis- 
posed between  Messines  and  Hollebeke.  The 
enemy  had  advanced  a  considerable  distance 
across  the  open  groiuid  which  divides  the  ridge 
of  the  Mont-des-Cats  at  Messines  from  the 
roUing,  wooded  district  east  of  Ypres. 

The  1st  Cavalry  Division  wliich  was  deployed 
between  Messines  and  the  wood  of  Ploegsteert 
had  also  been  in  peril.  At  7  a.m.  the  Germans 
had  taken  Le  Gheir  and  begun  to  file  into  the 
wood.  A  battalion  of  the  104th  Regiment  of 
the  Saxon  19th  Army  Corps  entrenched  itself 
in  the  village.  The  importance  of  Le  Gheir 
does  not  need  to  be  insisted  upon.  Through 
it  the  Germans  could  enter  the  wood  of 
Ploegsteert,  turn  the  flank  of  the  1st  Cavalry 
Division  at  St.  Yves,  spread  out  on  the  ridge 
beyond,  cross  the  Douve  and  attack  from 
the  south  Messines  and  the  ridge  of  the 
Mont-des-Cats. 


1.  BRIG.-GEN.    H.    E.    WATTS,    C.B.    (21st  Infantry  Brigade). 

2.  BRIG.-GEN.    H.    J.    RUGGLES-BRISE,    M.V.O.    (20th  Infantry  Brigade). 

3.  BRIG.-GEN.  S.  T.  B.  LAWFORD  (22nd  Infantry  Brigade). 


458 


THE    TIMES    HISTOEY    OF    THE    WAR. 


THE    GERMANS    AT    DIXMUDE. 
Well-protected  infantry  firing  from  beneath  a  concrete  roof  shelter. 


Happily  a  British  soldier  of  daring  and 
resource  was  on  the  spot.  General  Hunter- 
Weston,  who  in  the  South  African  War  had 
passed  through  the  Boer  lines  and  cut  the 
railway  between  Bloemfontein  and  Pretoria, 
had  anticipated  the  German  attack  on  Le 
Gheir.  At  2  a.m.  he  had  moved  the  East 
Lancashires  and  Somerset  Light  Infantry  from 
the  south  to  the  north  bank  of  the  Lys.  With 
Lieut-Colonel  Aniey  he  now  organized  a  counter- 
attack. Le  Gheir  was  recaptured,  and  the 
brave  Germans  defending  it  were  practically 
wiped  out.  Some  400  dead  were  picked  up 
in  the  British  lines  alone,  and  130  prisoners 
were  taken.  In  this  fighting  the  Iving's  Own 
Lancaster  Regiment  and  the  Lancashire  Fusi- 
liers of  the  12th  Infantry  Brigade  were  well- 
handled  by  Lieut. -Colonel  Butler. 

Details   of   the   fighting  are  supplied  by  an 

officer  of  the  East  Lancashire  Regiment  in  a 

letter  published  by  the  Morning  Post  : 

At  2  a.m.  on  the  21st  we  had  orders  to  trek  on  anotlier 
tlireo  miles  across  the  river.  The  bridge  had  been  blown 
up,  so  we  went  over  on  a  pontoon  bridge,  and  got  to  the 
village  of  Ploegsteert,  when  we  were  hurriedly  sent  for 
and  ordered  to  take  the  battalion  out  to  the  trenches 
defending  the  village.  So  away  we  went,  and  then  met 
a  stream  of  wounded,  all  declaring  that  the  Germans 
were  in  thousands  when  they  attacked  their  trenches 
two  miles  away  and  captured  them.  We  were  now 
ordered  to  make  a  counter-attack  and  recapture  the  lost 
trenehes,  so  with  A  and  D  companies  we  plunged  into  a 
thick  wood  and  gradually  worked  our  way  through  it. 
The  Germans  wore  firing  into  it  with  rifle  and  machine- 
guns,  so  the  bullets  were  humming  through  the  trees. 
On  getting  through  the  wood  and  looking  over  the  fence, 


we  saw  we  were  behind  the  Germans,  who  were  occupying 
a  trench  in  the  open.  Then  the  fun  began.  We  enfiladed 
them  and  knocked  the.n  over  like  rabbits.  Lieutenant 
Hughes  and  his  platoon  charged  them  in  front,  and  as 
they  got  near  he  was  killed,  shot  through  the  head. 
His  slayer  was  spitted  on  a  bayonet,  and  even  then  tried 
to  kick  his  man,  but  he  was  downed  and  spitted  through 
and  through.  Afterwards  we  found  he  was  the  proud 
possessor  of  the  Iron  Cross.  He  died  game.  Two  com 
panics  of  the  Somersets  also  joined  in  with  us,  and 
between  us  we  got  over  100  prisoners  and  of  the  dead 
we  picked  up  about  the  same  number,  but  many  others 
are  lying  in  the  fields. 

It  was  a  funny  sight  to  see  our  men  picking  up  the 
Germans  out  of  the  trenches  and  making  them  high-step 
away  with  hands  above  their  heads  and  with  fixed 
bayonets  at  their  backs.  We  came  off  cheap  :  some  ten 
killed  and  fifty  wounded.  We  put  the  — —  back  in  their 
trenches,  and  we  were  warmly  thanked  by  their  com- 
manding officer.  As  soon  as  the  German  artillery 
realized  their  men  were  driven  out  they  began  shelling 
us,  but  with  no  result.  At  dusk  we  were  ordered  to  take 
over  the  trenches. 

South  of  the  Lys  there  had  been  a  succes.sion 
of  fierce  encounters.  Away  on  the  extreme 
right  at  Violaines,  a  mile  to  the  west  of  La 
Bassee,  the  Germans  had  endeavoured  to  break 
through  the  line  of  the  II.  Corps.  They  had 
been  repulsed  with  considerable  loss.  A  little 
to  the  north  of  Violaines,  however,  the  British 
had  been  driven  from  the  ridge,  but  had 
regained  their  trenches  by  a  counter-attack. 
Between  that  ^^oirit.  and  Armentieres  the 
Germans  had  captvued  some  trenches.  The 
total  losses  of  the  enemy  south-east  of  Armen- 
tieres were  estimated  at  over  6,000.  A  subal- 
tern who  pictures  for  us  one  of  their  attacks 
on  the  21st  permits  us  to  understand    how  it 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


459 


vras    that    they    received   such   heavy   punish- 
ment: 

A  German  attack  is  an  extraordinary  thing,  but  I 
must  say  they  are  very  brave  indeed.  First  you  hear 
their  trumpets  blowing,  also  a  kind  of  hunting  horn, 
then  the  orders  of  the  officers  and  the  yells  of  the  soldiers. 
Then  follows  a  hail  of  bullets  and  they  come  on  in 
masses,  making  an  awful  noise.  We  let  them  get  about 
40  yards  off  and  then  we  let  them  have  it  with  a  ven- 
geance. What  with  the  shrieks,  yells,  horn-blowing, 
rifles  firing,  and  everything  on  fire,  it  is  as  if  hell  were 
let  loose.  Well,  we  beat  them  back  ;  that  was  the  first 
day.  The  next  two  days  the  same  thing  happened, 
except  that  we  dug  ourselves  in  the  first  of  the  two  nights. 
Then  we  were  shelled  all  day  long  for  the  two  days  and 
attacked  at  night.  At  length,  the  third  night,  we  were 
relieved  after  the  attacks,  and  the  men  who  relieved  us 
counted  740  dead  Germans  in  front  of  our  trenches,  at  a 
distance  of  about  40  yards.  As  the  average  of  killed  to 
wounded  is  said  to  be  one  to  three,  the  German  casualties 
must  have  been  about  3,000. 

The  horrible  sights  behind  the  German 
hnes  must  have  given  the  German  Commanders 
furiously  to  think.  They  brought  home  to 
tliem  very  definitely  that  the  destruction  was 
not  all  on  one  side. 

Though  the  Germans  had  suffered  on  the 
21st  the  most  appalling  losses,  it  was  now 
apparent  to  the  British  Generalissimo  that  the 
utmost  he  could  do  was  to  maintahi  his  very 
extended  front  and  to  hold  fast  his  positions 
until  French  reinforcements  could  arrive  from 
the  south. 

Elated  by  their  successes,  if  depressed  by  the 
awful  slaughter  incurred  in  gaining  them,  the 
Germans  on  Thtirsday,  October  22,  pressed  on. 
They  issued  from  the  trenches  near  La  Bassee, 
and  captured  the  village  of  Violaines  and 
another  point  on  the  long,  low  ridge.  Violaines 
was  lost  to  the  Allies,  but  the  Worcesters  and 
]\Ianchesters  prevented  the  enemy  from  march- 
ing through  Violaines  to  cut  the  connexion 
between  Maud'huy's  left  and  the  IT.  Corps, 
while  the  French  and  British  artillery  saved  a 
third  village  near  Violaines  from  the  German 
advance  by  interposing  a  ctirtain  of  bursting 
shells.  At  sunset  Smith-Dorrien's  exhausted 
and  nerve-shattered  troops  still  clung  to  the 
greater  part  of  the  Radinghem-Givenehy  ridge, 
but  during  the  night,  which  was  very  cold,  Sir 
Horace  withdrew  his  Corps  to  a  position  which 
he  had  previously  prepared.  This  ran  from 
the  eastern  side  of  Givenchy,  east  of  Neuve 
Chapelle,  to  Fauquissart  on  the  Armentieres- 
Neuve  Chapelle  chaussee.  The  British  aban- 
doned most  of  the  ridge  and  descended  into 
the  flat,  waterlogged  plain  behind  the  stream 
of  the  Layes,  which  flows  into  the  Lys  at 
Amientieres. 

A  few  hundred  yards  to  the  south  of  Neuve 


TO    DRAW    THE    ENEMY'S    FIRE. 
The  British  expose  a  dummy  from  the  trenches. 

Chapelle  the  Armentieres  road  joins  the  high- 
way from  La  Bassee  to  Estaires  on  the  Lys. 
Henceforth  Sir  Horace  Smith-Dorrien's  ainos 
were  three.  At  any  price  he  must  prevent 
the  Germans  from  dividing  him  from  Maud- 
'huj^'s  left  in  front  of  Bethune ;  at  Neu\'e 
Chapelle  he  must  bar  the  advance  of  the  enemy 
on  the  Lys  and  to  the  single -line  railway  which 
south  of  the  Lys  connects  Armentieres  with 
Bethune ;  between  Neuve  Chapelle  and 
Fauquissart  he  must  defend  the  road  which 
linked  his  Corps  to  Conneau's  Cavalry  Corps 
and  the  II.  Corps.  Fighting  from  the  plain 
against  the  Germans  on  the  ridge  his  tasks 
were,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  extraordinarily 
difficult. 

From  the  east  of  Fauqvtissart  the  Allied  line 
covering  Armentieres  and  touching  the  Lys 
west  of  Frelirighien  was  on  the  22nd  again 
subjected  to  heavy  cannonading  and — in  the 
evening — to  a  n  amber  of  attacks  by  the 
German  infantry.  Here  the  Germans  made 
little  headway. 

North  of  the  Lys  at  4  a.m.  the  Germans 
assaulted  Le  Gheir  for  the  second  time,  but 
were  beaten  off.  All  day  they  shelled  the  vil- 
lage, but  as  the  British  were  not  in  it  but  in 
the  surroimding  trenches,  they  inflicted  little 


460 


H 

o 
-1 

H 
H 

< 
CQ 

O 

w 

< 

H 
en 

a: 


W 

H 

W 
H 
< 

H 

en 

D 

o 


461 


462 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


BELGIAN    CAVALRY    AT    WORK. 

This    unit    of    a    patrol    is    the    last    man    left    to 

watch      the      movements      of       the      approaching 

Germans. 


loss.  North  of  Le  Gheir  the  Cavalry  Corps 
defending  the  gap  between  the  wood  of 
Ploegsteert  and  Messines  and  that  between 
Messines  and  Hollebeke  was  by  Sir  John 
French's  orders  reinforced  by  the  7th  Indian 
Infantry  Brigade  less  one  battalion.  That 
brigade  moved  to  Wulverghem  on  the  Douve, 
and  General  Allenby,  who  commanded  the 
Cavalry  Corps,  sent  one  battalion  of  the  Indians 
across  the  ridge  of  the  Mont-des-Cats  to  Wyt- 
schaete,  north  of  Messines,  and  another  bat- 
talion to  Voormezeele,  a  village  a  little  to  the 
west  of  St.  Eloi.  These  dispositions  permitted 
Byng  to  move  the  7th  Cavalry  Brigade  from 
Voormezeele  and  St.  Eloi  over  the  Comines- 
Ypres  Canal  to  Klein  ZUlebeke  on  the  Wervicq- 
Zandvoorde  -  Klein  Zillebeke  -  Zillebeke  -  Ypres 
road.  The  6th  Cavalry  Brigade,  it  will  be 
recollected,  had  the  day  before  entrenched 
itself  between  Zandvoorde  and  the  canal.  For 
the  next  few   days  the   6th   and   7th   Cavalry 


Brigades  alternately  occupied  the  Zandvoorde- 
Chatean  dc  Hollebeke  trenches,  being  con- 
stantly shelled,  sniped  at.  and  charged  by  the 
enemy. 

Seldom  have  cavalry  rendered  such  services 
as  Byng's  Division  and  the  Cavalry  Corps 
now  performed.  Great,  indeed,  liad  been  the 
progress  made  in  the  training  of  the  British 
since  the  South  African  War,  which  had  made 
them  equally  adept  in  fighting  on  horseback 
or  on  foot.  As  infantrymen  these  splendid 
troops  rivalled  the  best  foot-soldiers  in  the 
Army.  On  horseback  they  had  more  than 
maintained  the  traditions  of  Waterloo  and 
Balaclava.  It  must  have  been  gall  and  bitter- 
ness to  the  Kaiser  that  his  cavalry,  niu-sed  in 
the  memories  of  Ziethen,  Seidlitz  and  Bliicher, 
and  taught  to  regard  itself  as  invincible,  had 
fled  headlong  before  the  British  troopers,  who 
now  dismounted,  held  at  bay  enormous  masses 
of  the  German  infantry. 

From  Zandvoorde  over  the  fields  to  Ghelu- 
velt  on  the  INIenin-Ypres  road,  and  from 
Gheluvelt  to  Zonnebeke,  the  German  efforts 
against  the  7th  Division  had  not  on  the  22nd 
relaxed.  At  daybreak  shells  began  to  fall. 
About  3.30  p.m.  the  battle  raged  fiercest,  and 
General  W^atts  received  a  message  from  Sir 
John  French  that  he  must  hold  on  at  all  costs, 
"as  the  I.  Corps  was  coming  up  as  quickly  as 
possible  to  his  support."  The  Wiltshires  and 
Scotch  Fusiliers,  among  other  regiments  of 
the  7th  Infantry  Division,  suffered  terribly. 
The  Germans  had  brought  up  heavy  howitzers, 
and  many  men  had  been  buried  ahve  in  their 
trenches.  At  5  p.m.  the  firing  slackened  and 
the  German  prisoners  were  brought  in.  They 
were  mostly  fathers  of  families,  about  the  ages 
of  39  and  40,  and  had  received  little  training  ; 
their  unifornis  were  brand  new.  To  render 
them  desperate  they  had  been  told  that  the 
British  took  no  prisoners. 

Meanwhile  the  I.  Corps,  hampered  by  the 
necessity  of  sending  support  to  the  7th  Infantry 
Division,  had  with  ever  increasing  difficulty 
held  its  own  between  Zonnebeke  and  Bix- 
schoote.  During  the  day  a  series  of  attacks 
had  been  beaten  oH,  but  late  in  the  evening 
the  enemy  broke  through  the  line  south-west 
of  Langemarck  and  north  of  Pilkem.  The 
Cameronian  Highlanders  retired  and  the  road 
to  Ypres  for  a  moment  was  open. 

That  night  the  German  commanders  must 
have  believed  that  a  crowning  victory  was 
within  their  grasp.       Away  on  the  Yser  they 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


468 


had  crossed  the  loop  of  the  canal  at  Tervaete  ; 
the  low  embankment  of  the  railroad  from 
Dixmude  to  Nieuport  might  at  dawn  be 
in  their  possession ;  from  the  embankment 
they  could  march  through  Pervyse  and  Rams- 
cappelle  either  on  Nieuport  and  Dixmude  or  on 
Furnes.  From  Furnes  high  roads  led  to 
Dunkirk  and  Ypres.  North  of  Ypres  the 
Germans,  as  mentioned,  had  penetrated  the 
line  near  Pilkem,  and  to  the  east  of  Ypres  the 
7th  Infantry  Division  seemed  in  its  last  gasp. 
To  the  south  of  the  city  only  cavalry  and  a  few 
Indian  troops  stood  between  them  and  the 
capital  of  Western  Flanders,  and  the  right 
wing  of  the  Allies  was  withdrawing  from  the 
Civenchy-Radinghem  ridge. 

Early  in  October  the  Crown  Prince  of 
Bavaria  had  exhorted  his  soldiers  "to  make 
the  decisive  effort  against  the  French  left 
wing  and  to  settle  thus  the  fate  of  the  great 
battle  which  had  lasted  for  weeks."  The 
defeat  of  the  Allies  north  of  the  Lys  and 
between  the  Lys  and  La  Bassee  would  not  only 
transfer  Dunkirk,  Calais,  and  Boulogne  to  the 
Germans  and  prepare  the  way  for  the  invasion 
or  starvation  of  Great  Britain,  but  would  also 
force  Maud'huy  to  beat  a  pre(;ipitate  retreat 
to  the  Somme.  The  morrow  might  see  the 
annihilation  of  the  British  and  Belgian  Armies, 
and  after  such  a  disaster  would  not  the 
French  resistance  everywhere  collapse  ? 

Happily  on  the  23rd,  as  on  subsequent 
days,  the  hopes  of  the  Germans  were  not  to  be 
realized.  The  42nd  French  Division  under 
General  Grossetti  and  several  howitzers  of 
large  calibre  had  reached  Furnes.  The  42nd 
was  directed  by  JofEre  to  relieve  the  Belgian 
2nd  Division  in  Nieuport.  Owing  to  the  fire 
of  the  German  artillery  Grossetti  had  to  pass 
his  troops  in  small  bodies  over  the  Nieuport 
bridge,  but  by  nightfall  the  Belgian  troops 
who  had  lost  Lombartzyde  had  been  replaced 
by  some  of  the  best  fighting  material  in  the 
French  Army,  and  at  last  big  guns  on  the  land 
as  well  as  from  the  sea  supported  the  defenders.* 
The  Germans,  who  had  swarmed  into  the  loop 
of  the  Yser  and  driven  back  the  Belgians  to 
the  railway  embanl<ment  between  Rams- 
cappelle  and  Pervyse,  could  make  no  further 
progress,  and  the  fourteen  assaults  on  Dix- 
mude   delivered   by  the  Duke  of  VVurtemberg 


during  the  night    of   the    23rd-24th   ended    in 
failure. 

North  of  Ypres  the  gap  in  the  line  of  the 
I.  Corps  between  Bixschoote  and  Langemarck 
was  closed.  Major-General  Bulfin.  with  the 
2nd  Infantry  Brigade  (less  the  2nd  Royal 
Sussex  Regiment,  which  was  left  at  Boesinghe 
to  guard  the  Yperlee  Canal),  had  been  sent  to 
reinforce  the  1st  Infantry  Brigade.  At  6  a.m. 
on  the  23rd  the  1st  Loyal  North  Lancashires, 
the  King's  Royal  Rifles,  and  the  Northamptons 
moved  on  the  enemy,  mostly  consisting  of 
troops  of  the  recently  raised  XXIII.  Corps. 
Near  Bixschoote,  through  close  and  difficult 
country,  the  Lancashires,  under  heavy  shell 
and  rifle  fire,  advanced  steadily,  aided  by 
the  regiment's  machine  guns.  Within  a 
comparatively  short  distance  of  the  hostile 
trenches  they  formed  up,  fixed  bayonets, 
and  charged.  The  position  was  taken.  Hard  by 
the  King's  Royal  Rifles  and  the  Northamptons, 
at   the    point    of    the    bayonet,    were    driving 


♦  The  Gorman  forces  on  the  Yser  at  this  date  appear 
to  have  consistod  of  the  3rd  and  21st  Reserve  Corps, 
one  Ersatz  Division,  and  a  brigade  of  Landwehr. 
Later  a  Division  of  Marines  joined  them. 


LIFE    IN    THE    TRENCHES. 
A  British  soldier  eating  his  dinner. 


464 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


the  Germans  before  them.  As  the  foe  fled  the 
British  field  artillery  and  howitzers  opened. 
The  rain  of  shrapnel  drove  the  Germans  for 
shelter  into  villages  and  farms.  Out  of  these 
they  were  expelled  by  high  explosive  shells. 
Again  in  the  fields  hundreds  of  the  Germans 
fell  victims  to  the  shrapnel  bullets. 

The  enemy,  who  were  reluctant  to  forgo 
what  the  night  before  had  appeared  to  be  a 
certain  victory,  were  five  times  brought  back 
to  charge  Bulfin's  Brigade  and  the  3rd  Brigade. 
They  marched  in  masses,  singing  "  Die  Wacht 
am  Rhein,"  but  lack  of  training  and  faults  in 
leading  told  their  tale.  The  British  reserved 
their  fire  till  a  very  close  range,  and  then  with 
their  rifles  and  maxims  mowed  down  the 
6nemy.  If  the  columns  of  the  Old  Guard  at 
Waterloo  had  not  been  able  to  withstand 
the  fire  of  infantry  armed  with  the  Brown  Bess 
what  chance  had  these  masses  against  soldiers 
with  repeating  rifles  and  machine  guns  ?  As 
on  each  occasion  they  retired  the  scene  wliich 
had  followed  their  flight  before  the  Lancashires, 
Northamptons,  and  King's  Royal  Rifles  was 
re-enacted.  The  British  field  guns  and  howit- 
zers gave  them  no  rest ;  for  that  day  the  guns 
were  worked  with  almost  superhuman  haste, 
one  field  battery  alone  expending  1,800  rounds 
of  ammunition. 

Six  hundred  prisoners  were  secured,  and 
fifteen  hundred  German  dead  were  counted  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Langemarck  alone. 
How  many  were  wounded,  how  many  managed 
to  reach  their  own  lines  and  there  die,  is  not 
known.  From  correspondence  found  subse- 
quently on  a  Ger:nan  officer  it  transpired  that 
on  the  23rd  the  attacking  corps  lost  75  per  cent, 
of  their  strength. 

Between  Bixschoote  and  Langemarck  the 
Germans  had  in  the  open  met  with  the  same 
fate  as  their  comrades  who  were  trying  to  storm 
Dixmude.  "  We  are  all  in  the  seventh  heaven," 
wrote  on  the  23rd  a  non-commissioned  officer 
of  the  Loyal  North  Lancasliires.  "  Have  given 
the  Germans  an  awful  slap  and  have  them 
going  all  along  the  line.     Their  losses  must  be 


enormous.  Our  fellows  got  among  them  with 
the  bayonet,  and  nothing  could  withstand 
them." 

From  Langemarck  to  Zonnebeke  and  from 
Zonnebeke  to  Zandvoorde  and  the  Ypres- 
Comines  Canal,  the  fighting  had  been  also  of  a 
severe  character.  At  Zonnebeke  Corporal  W.  J. 
Askew,  of  the  2nd  Coldstream  Guards  (part  of 
the  4th  Infantry  Brigade,  2nd  Division  of  the 
I.  Corps)  had  showTi  conspicuous  courage 
and  great  ability.  He  had  voluntarily  taken 
out  a  patrol  to  hold  ground  300  yards  in  front 
of  the  trenches,  and,  placing  his  small  party  in 
pairs,  150  yards  apart,  he  held  up  the  enemy's 
attack  for  no  less  than  three  hours,  and  then 
succeeded  in  retiring  under  heavy  fire  from 
both  flanks. 

The  Cavalry  Corps  between  the  Ypres- 
Comines  Canal  and  the  wood  of  Ploegsteert 
and  the  III.  Corps  from  Le  Gheir  across  the 
Lys  and  Conneau's  Cavalry  Corps  were  also 
violently  but  luisuccessfully  attacked.  On  the 
right  the  enemy,  having  discovered  that  Smith - 
Dorrien  had  withdrawn  the  II.  Corps  to  the 
line  Givenchy-Neuve  Chapelle-Fauquissart,  con- 
fined himself  to  an  artillery  duel  in  which  several 
of  his  batteries  wore  silenced  by  the  British  fire. 

Joffre  and  Foch  had  reinforced  the  Belgians 
on  the  Yser  in  the  nick  of  time  ;  they  were 
now  reinforcing  the  British.  That  evening  a 
division  of  the  French  9th  Army  Corps  who 
had  reached  Ypres  came  up  into  line  and  took 
over  the  trenches  held  by  the  2nd  Division 
(I.  Corps). 

With  the  simultaneous  arrival  of  French 
reinforcements  on  the  Yser  and  at  Ypres  the 
first  phase  of  the  battle  of  Ypres  may  be  con- 
sidered to  have  ended.  The  British  and  the 
Belgians,  with  Ronarc'h's  6,000  Marines,  Bidon's 
two  Territorial  Divisions,  De  Mitry's  four 
Cavalry  Divisions,  and  Conneau's  Cavalry 
Corps,  had  from  the  night  of  October  IG  to  the 
night  of  October  23,  attacking  and  counter- 
attacking, acted  as  a  firm  barrier  in  the  path  of 
the  hosts  of  the  Duke  of  Wurtemberg  and  the 
Crown  Prince  of  Bavaria. 


CHAPTER   LXIII. 

THE    FRANCO-BELGIAN  BATTLE 

OF    THE    YSER. 


The  Germans  on  October  24  Across  the  Yser  at  Tervaete — Grossetti  Retakes  Lombart- 
ZYDE  AND  Moves  Towards  Ostend — The  Germans  over  the  Yser  at  St.  Georges — Bombard- 
ment OF  NiEUPORT — French  and  Belgians  Drive  Germans  into  the  Yser — Battle  of  the. 
25th  ;  Renewed  Offensive  of  the  Duke  of  Wurtemberg — Exhaustion  of  Allies — Inunda- 
tion OF  the  Yser  District  Ordered — Nature  of  the  Inundation — Battle  of  October  26 ; 
Attempt  to  Surprise  Dixmude  ;  Belgian  Staff  Leaves  Furnes  but  Returns  ;  Victory  of 
THE  Allies — Battle  of  October  28 ;  H.M.S.  Venerable  Rakes  the  Germans  Advancing  on 
NiEUPORT — Effects  of  the  Fire  of  the  British  Flotilla  ;  The  Inundation  Spreading 
Towards  Pervyse — Battle  for  the  Railway  Embankment  (October  29,  30,  31) ;  Ramscappelle 
Lost  and  Recovered  ;  Victory  of  the  Allies  ;  Germans  Driven  Headlong  into  the  Floods 
AND  Over  the  Yser. 


FROM  the  preceding  chapter  and  from 
Chapter  LIV.  it  will  be  gathered  that 
on  October  24  the  Germans  seemed  to 
be  on  the  point  of  gaining  at  Ypres 
and  on  the  Yser  victories  which,  even  if  they 
were  not  decisive,  would  gravely  imperil  the 
cause  of  the  Allies.  Those  two  battles  formed 
what  the  French  call  the  "  Battle  of  Flanders," 
which  was  by  far  the  bloodiest  of  the  battles 
delivered  by  the  left  wing  of  the  AlUes  from  the 
middle  of  September  to  the  middle  of  November. 
The  heroic  resistance  of  the  Allies  on  the 
Yser  from  October  16  to  October  23  has  been 
already  related.  In  the  present  chapter  will 
be  told  the  story  of  the  fighting  in  October 
from  the  23rd  to  the  3 1st. 

By  the  morning  of  the  24th  the  Germans  had 
crossed  into  the  western  side  of  the  loop  which 
is  formed  by  the  Yser  half-way  between 
Dixmude  and  Nieuport,  and  General  Grossetti 
with  the  French  42nd  Division  had  the  day 
before  reUeved  the  Belgian  2nd  Division  round 
Nieuport  and,  protected  by  the  fire  of  the  Allied 
flotilla,  had  marched  on  Lombartzyde.  His 
aim    was    to    recapture    that    village,    storm 

465 


Westende,  iliddelkerke  and  Mariakerke.  and 
seize  both  the  Digue,  running  westward  along 
the  Dunes  from  Ostend  to  the  last-named 
seaside  resort,  and  also  the  north  bank  of  the 
canal  which  from  Nieuport  runs  into  the 
Ostend -Ghent  Canal  between  Ostend  and 
Bruges.  A  blow  at  Ostend,  which  could  be 
bombarded  by  the  British  monitors  and 
destroyers,  would  oblige  the  enemy  to 
reduce  his  effectives  on  the  Yser  south  of 
Nieuport. 

During  the  night  of  the  23rd-24th  there 
were  several  fierce  encounters  round  Lom- 
bartzyde. A  French  company  caught  b  'tween 
two  fires  was  severely  handled.  Another 
company  which  had  crept  forward  to  an 
advanced  trench  found  a  party  of  what  ap- 
peared to  be  Belgian  infantry  on  their  right. 
In  the  morning  of  the  24th  a  heav-y  sea-fog 
spread  over  the  coast  land.  Suddenly  through 
the  mist  a  jet  of  bullets  swept  the  French 
trench.  It  came  from  the  soldiers  on  the  right 
who  were  Germans  dressed  in  Belgian  uniforms, 
and  they  had  turned  on  Grossetti' s  men  a 
machine   gun.     Dcsjiito   these   unfortunate   in- 


466 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


Exercising  Artillery  horses. 


Belgian  dogs  drawing  a  gun  across  the  sands. 


^^fcJlPSUB 


r'^^^PISi 


cidents,  tlie  French  infantry  pressed  on, 
stormed  liOmbartzyde  and  attacked  Westende. 

At  any  price  the  Germans  }iad  to  prevent 
Grossetti  turning  their  right  flank.  To  do  this 
the  obvious  course  was  to  shell  Nieuport,  and 
from  Mannekensvere  to  cross  the  canal  at 
St.  Georges  and  to  assault  the  eastern  streets 
of  the  town.  All  through  the  morning,  there- 
fore, howitzers  and  field  guns  played  on  Nieu- 
port and  the  bridges  there  which  led  over  the 
Yser  and  its  various  branches.  From  the 
little  watering  place  of  Brueders-Duynen,  west 
of  Nieuport  Bains,  and  from  other  points  the 
French  artillery  unavailingly  endeavoured  to 
keep  down  the  German  fire.  Over  Nieuport 
hung  an  intensely  black  pall  of  smoke,  broken 
every  moment  by  the  gleaming  flashes  of 
bursting  projectiles.  The  streets  had  been 
barricaded,  and  motor-ambulances  found  diffi- 
culty in  threading  their  way  through  the  town 
in  their  efforts  to  bring  back  the  wounded. 

In  the  afternoon  the  German  artillery  gave 
Nieuport  a  rest  and  the  bombardment  died 
down.  The  enemy  was  charging  the  Belgians 
defending  St.  Georges,  and  his  artillery  was 
wanted  elsewhere.  "  There  seemed,"  says  an 
observer  at  Nieuport,  "  no  cessation  to  the 
continuous  roar  of  the  guns  through  the  mist." 
Crowds  of  Belgian  wounded  and  fugitives  from 
the  trenches  along  the  Yser  trooped  into  the 
town. 

At  last  the  resistance  of  the  Belgians  in  and 
around  St.  Georges  broke  down.  Two  bat- 
teries of  artillery  and  several  machine  gun  sec- 
tions were  withdrawn,  and  the  worn-out  de- 
fenders retired.  Near  Nieuport  they  were 
rallied,  and  their  faces  were  again  turned  to- 
wards the  foe.  At  5.30  the  bombardment  of 
Nieuport,  where  the  inhabitants  were  hiding  in 
the  cellars,  began  afresh.  .The  Germans  had 
taken  (at  St.  Georges)  another  crossing  over  tlie 
Yser ;  if  they  were  not  checked,  they  miglit 
carry  Nieuport  and  cut  off  Grossetti's  Division, 


Belgian  Lancers  on  the  way  to  the  fighting  line.      Inset  :    Motor-cyclist  scout. 

THE    BATTLE    OF    THE    COAST— 
From  Ostend  to  Dunkirk  along  the  shore  stretch  the  Dunes  -great  heaps  of  sand,  some  planted  with  trees. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


467 


or,  avoiding  Nieuport,  they  might  pierce  the 
Alhed  Hne  at  Ramscappelle  on  the  railway 
between  Nieuport  and  Dixmude. 

Ramscappelle  was  also  threatened  from  the 
east.  Orders  had  been  given  to  the  Germans 
to  break  through  the  Allied  centre  at  all  cost. 
Between  St.  Georges  and  Schoorbakke  (at  the 
northern  end  of  the  Yser  loop)  and  into  the 
loop  of  the  Yser  from  Keyem  tlirough  Tervaete 
rushed  the  long  lines  and  columns  of  the 
Kaiser's  infuriated  soldiery,  accompanied  by 
dozens  of  machine  guns,  while  another  attempt 
was  made  to  carry  Dixmude  from  the  right 
banlc  of  the  canal.  Over  the  heads  of  the 
struggling  combatants  passed  the  huge  shells  of 
the  German  and  French  howitzers.  From  the 
sea  came  the  reverberations  of  the  6 -inch  guns 
of  the  British  warships  as  they  fired  at  the 
advancing  infantry  of  the  Kaiser. 

On  the  edge  of  the  canal,  and  in  the  network 
of  dykes  and  ditches  between  the  canal  and  the 
low  railway  embankment  there  were  terrific 
hand-to-hand  encounters.  With  bayonet  and 
butt-end  soldiers  fought  after  the  fashion  of 
the  middle  ages.  A  huge  Belgian  who  had 
come  from  British  Columbia  used  his  rifle  as 
prinaitive  man  was  accustomed  to  use  a  club. 
To  destroy  the  illusion  that  the  world  had  gone 
batik  many  centuries,  soldiers  from  time  to 
time  would  empty  their  jjistols  or  repeating 
rifles,  and  machine  guns  would  drill  long  holes 
through  advancing  columns,  or  sweep  to  the 
ground  a  line  of  charging  men. 

To  stem  the  tide  of  Germans  flowing  towards 
the  railway  embankment  the  Belgian  2nd 
Division,  which  had  been  relieved  by  Grossetti's 
had  been  brought  up  to  the  railway ;  from 
Lombartzyde  and  Xieuport,  French  troops 
were  hiu"ried  back.  Belgian  cavalrymen  dis- 
mounted and  went  into  action  as  infantrymen, 
and  French  Territorials  were  pushed  forward. 
Ronarc'h  had  already  detached  froin  Dixmude 
to  Oud-Stuvvekenskerke  Commandant  Jeanniot 


Belgian  scout. 


Goumiers  on  the  Dunes. 


Belgian  Artillery  on  the  sands.      Inset  :   A  macliinc-gun. 
—THE    SAND    DUNES. 

Skirting  the  Dunes  on  the  south  side  is  the  canal  from  Dunkirk  through  Furnes  to  Nieuport. 


468 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


DUKE    ALBREGHT  OF  WURTEMBERG. 

■with  a  battalion ;  for  the  Germans  from 
Tervaete  seemed  about  to  attack  Dixraude 
along  the  west  bank  of  the  canal. 

Gradually  step  bj'  step  the  Germans,  who 
fought  with  even  more  than  their  accustomed 
recklessness,  were  thrust  back  to  and  then  up 
the  high  bank  of  the  canal.  On  the  edge  of 
the  canal  groups  of  struggling  men  could  be 
seen  against  the  sky  line.  At  places  the  jjon- 
toon  bridges  had  been  destroyed  by  shells,  and 
there  the  Germans,  followed  by  their  pursuers, 
were  precipitated  into  the  muddy,  sluggish 
waters.  By  nightfall  the  attack  had  failed. 
The  Germans  had  lost  some  5,000  men ; 
Jeanniot  had  established  himself  round  Oud- 
Stuyvekenskerke ;  and,  though  the  enemy 
still  held  the  crossings  at  Tervaete,  Schoore- 
bakke  and  St.  Georges,  the  whole  line  of  the 
railway  embankment  remained  in  the  hands  of 
the  Allies. 

Dixmude  was  safe  from  an  attack  delivered 
by  the  enemy  down  the  west  bank  of  the  canal. 
The  long  continued  assault  on  it  from  the  east 
during  the  day  had  failed.  It  and  Nieuport 
were  in  ruins ;  the  flames  of  four  or  five 
villages  marked  the  track  of  the  Germans 
and  the  work  of  their  artillery,  but  the  Allied 
line  was  intact.  The  sensations  of  the  average 
German  who  took  part  in   the    day's   fighting 


may  be  surmised  from  this  note  found  the 
next  day  on  the  body  of  an  officer  killed  at 
Oud-Stuyvekenskerke  : 

"  Everywhere  we  lose  men,  and  our  losses 
are  out  of  proportion  to  the  results  achieved 
...  Our  guns  cannot  silence  the  enemy's 
batteries  ;  the  attacks  of  our  infantry  lead  to 
nothing  ;  they  end  in  frightful  butcheries.  .  . 
Our  losses  must  have  been  enormous.  The 
Colonel,  Major,  and  many  other  officers  are 
dead  or  wounded." 

Soldiers  and  officers  might  be  disturbed  by 
the  awful  slaughter,  but  the  German  higher 
command  had  no  compassion  for  its  men.  On 
Sunday  (the  25th)  the  battle  was  renewed. 

While  the  French  from  Lombartzyde  attacked 
Westende,  the  Germans  again  bombarded 
Nieuport.  The  centre  of  the  town  was  an 
inferno.  Shells  were  blowing  up  or  setting  fire 
to  houses,  others  were  falUng  with  a  hiss  into 
the  canal  waters.  To  the  south  there  was 
another  advance  of  the  enemy  from  Schoor- 
bakke  on  Ramscappelle,  and  from  Tervaete  on 
Pervyse.  The  Belgians  and  the  detachments 
of  Grossetti's  Division,  one  of  which — a  bat- 
talion of  the  19th  Chasseurs — had  relieved  the 
marines     in     Oud-Stuyvekenskerke,    did     not. 


THE    GERMANS    IN    FLANDERS. 

The  enemy  have  a  quiet  half-hour. 
Note  the  food-cans  on  the  side  of  the  trench. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


469 


however,  give  way.  But  there  is  a  limit  to 
human  endurance ;  the  Belgians  were  tired 
out,  and  away  to  their  right  Ronarc'h  and  his 
Marines  found  it  ever  more  difficult  to  maintain 
themselves  in  Dixmude.  The  town  was  a 
wreck,  and  the  trenches  on  its  outskirts  were 
full  of  water,  for  there  had  been  a  heavy  rain. 
The  men  in  the  open,  often  soaked  to  the  skin, 
were  up  to  their  knees  in  mud  and  slush.  Well 
may  the  German  observers  in  the  cradles  below 
the  two  cigar-shaped  captive  balloons  which 
had  gone  up  behind  the  enemy's  lines  have 
imagined  that  in  a  few  hours  the  world  would 
be  echoing  with  the  news  of  a  genuine  victory 
on  the  Yser,  a  prelude  to  the  Kaiser's  triumphal 
entry  into  Calais.  To  counter  the  Allied 
flotilla,  more  and  more  of  the  guns  which  had 
destroyed  the  Briahnont  forts  at  Antwerp, 
Liege,  Nam\ir  and  Maubeuge  were  being 
moimted  among  the  Dunes,  and  it  was  becoming 
evident  to  Rear-Admiral  Hood  that  the  arma- 
ment of  most  of  his  ships  was  too  light  for  the 
task  which  they  had  undertaken.  Many  of 
the  vessels  had  been  hit  and  several  seamen 
killed  or  wounded,  chiefly  by  shrapnel.  So 
seriously  was  the  situation  regarded  by  the 
Belgian  staff  that  the  doctors  and  musses  in 
the  hospitals  of  Fxu-nes  had  already  received 
orders  to  be  in  readiness  to  clear  out  the 
wounded  at  two  hours'  notice. 

Facts  such  as  these  were  not  likely  to  be  lost 
on  Joffre  and  Foch.  It  was  now  abundantly 
clear  that  the  Germans  were  bent  on  delivering 
a  decisive  blow  north  of  the  Lys.  Instead  of 
having  to  rmi  the  risks  and  losses  which  would 
be   entailed   in   an   advance   on   Ghent,   Joffre 


would  have  only  to  confine  himself  to  fighting 
defensive  actions  between  the  coast  and  La 
Bassee.  It  was  round  Ypres  and  the  ridge  of 
the  Mont-des-Cats  and  between  the  Lys  and 
La  Bassee  that  the  Germans  were  almost 
certain  to  make  their  chief  effort  ;  and  yet,  as 
has  been  seen,  the  Allies  on  the  Yser  were  fast 
weakening.  Could  nothing  be  done  whicli 
would  not  involve  a  further  expenditure  of 
French  troops  to  strengthen  the  defence 
there  ? 

One  resource  was  still  at  Joffre's  disposal. 
Inundations  had  not  saved  Antwerp,  but  they 
might  here  be  effective.  The  celebrated  Vau- 
ban  had  proposed  to  protect  this  very  district 
by  flooding  it.  In  1795,  Nieuport  had  been- 
defended  by  an  inimdation.  Some  years 
before  the  Great  War,  Commandant  Delarmoy, 
a  Belgian  Staff  Officer,  when  a  pupil  at  the 
Ecole  de  Guerre,  had  published  an  essay 
explaining  how  the  obstacle  of  the  Yser  might 
be  increased  by  flooding  the  surrounding 
country.*  The  idea  of  an  inundation  between 
Nieuport  and  Dixmude  was  familiar  to  the 
Belgian  commanders,  and  had  not  been  over- 
looked by  an  engineer  officer,  like  Joffre,  or  a 
profound  thinker  on  war,  like  Foch. 

That  no  steps  had  hitherto  been  taken  to 
materialize  this  idea  is  easily  explainable.  An 
inimdation  would  protect  the  Belgians,  but  it 
would  also  have  hindered  Joffre  in  his  intended 
offensive  between  Dixmude  and  Nieuport,  and 
up  to  the  present  the  French  generalissimo  had 
hesitated    to   believe    that    the    Kaiser    would 

*  "  Fighting  with  King  Albert,"  by  Capitaine  Gabriel 
de  Libert  de  Flemalle  (Hodder  &  Stoughton),  p.  298. 


,i.mtj^ .    JlJ^v  U'**^   ■i^  *V  ''^i**^^  '■■KBIBHkk.Ji  Bah  " 


THE    BRITISH    IN    BELGIUM. 
Infantry  behind  a  barbed-wire  entanglement  awaiting  the  enemy. 


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470 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF     THE    WAB. 


471 


accumulate  his  reserves  north  of  the  Lys.  For  a 
German  victory  north  of  the  Lys  might,  indeed, 
lead  to  the  occujiation  of  the  Channel  ports, 
but  did  not,  liko  a  victory  between  the  Somme 
and  the  Oise  or  one  near  Verdun,  promise  to 
wound  mortally  the  French  Army. 

By  the  25th,  however,  the  evidence  that 
dynastic  and  political  motives  were  disturbing 
the  minds  of  the  German  strategists  was 
becoming  overwhelming,  and  the  inundation 
was  decided  upon. 

The  meadows  and  fields  to  be  flooded  were 
on  an  average  three  metres  or  so  above  sea  level, 
but  not  at  high  tide,  when  the  sea  at  this  point 
rises  4.50  to  6.0  metres.  By  a  system  of 
sluices  at  the  mouth  of  the  Yser  the  waters  of 
the  canal  and  the  innumerable  dykes  and 
ditches  which  drain  into  it  were  ordinarily 
discharged  into  the  sea.  At  high  tide  the 
sluices  were  closed  and  the  land  water  held 
back  until  the  sea  again  fell. 

On  the  25th  M.  Charles-Louis  Kogge,  the 
Sluice  Master  who  superintended  these  opera- 
tions at  Nieuport,  received  directions  as  it  were  ■ 
to  reverse  engines.  From  that  day  onwards  no 
land  water  was  permitted  to  enter  the  sea, 
while  at  high  tide  the  sea  was  introduced  into 
the  canal  to  push  back  the  land  water. 

The  result,  though  slow,  was  certain.  From 
the  eastern  side  of  the  hill  of  Cassel  and  the 
northern  side  of  the  ridge  of  the  Mont-des-Cats 
the  streams,  increased  by  heavy  rains,  flowed 
down  into  a  cul-de-sac,  the  bottom  of  which 
was  covered  by  hundreds  of  ditches  and  dykes 
already  filled  almost  to  the  brim  by  the  recent 
downfalls.  To  spread  the  inundation  the 
Belgian  and  French  artillery  during  the  25th 
and  the  succeeding  days  fired  shells  into  the 
raised  bank  of  the  canal  of  the  Yser,  thus 
breaking  this  water-channel  in  several  places, 
while  to  prevent  the  floods  extending  west  of 
tlie  low  railway  embankment  from  Dixmude 
to  Nieuport,  the  culverts  and  bridges  imder  it 
were  closed  up.  In  the  evening  of  October 
25  the  Belgian  Staff  informed  Rear-Admiral 
Ronarc'h  that  they  "  had  taken  all  the  necessary 
measures  to  flood  the  left  bank  of  the  Yser  be- 
tween the  canal  and  the  railway  from  Dixmude 
to  Nieuport."* 

Napoleon,  it  is  said,  was  unaware  of  Welling- 


*  In  November  M.  Kogge  was  created  Knight  of  the 
Order  of  Leopold,  "  for  liis  courageous  and  devoted  co- 
operation "  in  the  work  of  inundation.  The  map 
showing  the  inundations,  based  on  reports  of  Belgian 
Engineers,  will  bo  found  at  p.  479. 


ton's  creation  of  the  lines  of  Torres  Vedraa 
until  he  was  informed  of  their  existence  by 
Massena.  It  seems  probable  that  the  Duke  of 
Wurtemberg  did  not  anticipate  that  a  lake 
might  be  formed  between  the  Yser  and  th.e 
railway.  Otherwise  it  is  to  be  supposed  that 
at  any  cost  he  would  have  taken  Nieuport 
between  October  16  and  2^.  and  seized  the- 
sluices.     The    contemporarv    German    reports 


GENERAL    MEYSER, 
Commander  of  the  Belgian  Naval  Brigade. 

which  mocked  at  the  Allied  artillerymen  for 
firing  into  the  canal  banlc  confirm  the  hypo- 
thesis that  for  once  the  elaborate  spy  system 
of  the  Germans  had  broken  down,  and  that 
they  had  no  knowledge  of  the  possibility  of 
flooding  this  area.  Before  the  war  the  Germans 
had  built  in  Dixmude  at  the  unfinished  flour 
mills  platforms  for  the  Krupp  howitzers,  and  to 
the  south  they  had  in  prace-time  constructed 
a  veritable!  fortress — the  Chateau  do  Woumen — 
from   which   they   could,    it    necessary,   assault 


472 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


IN    THE    TRENCHES. 
The  Belgians  at  Ramscappelle. 

the  town.  But  they  do  not  seem  to  have 
apprehended  an  inundation  of  the  Dixmude- 
Nieuport  district. 

From  the  25th  onwards  the  Germans,  on  the 
west  side  of  the  Yser,  were  in  a  trap.  Their 
only  chance  of  escaping  was  to  carry  Nieuport, 
and  obtain  control  of  the  sluices. 

To  pierce  the  Belgian  centre,  vinless  it  led  to 
the  retreat  of  the  Allies  from  Nieuport,  would 
be  of  small  advantage  to  them.  Joffre  could 
have  railed  more   troops  to  Furnes,   and   the 


Germans  would  ultimately  have  been  driven 
into  the  artificial  lagoon  forming  east  of  the 
railway  embankment. 

Unconscious  of  the  snare  which  was  being 
laid  for  him,  the  enemy  on  the  26th  threw 
three  pontoon  bridges  across  the  Yser  and 
attacked  Nieuport,  but  the  majority  of  tlie 
20,000  troops  who  were  passed  over  the  bridges 
seem  to  have  been  directed  on  Pervyse,  which 
was  mercilessly  bombarded.  It  was  against 
these  that  General  Grossetti,  a  man  of  gigantic 
build,  sitting  in  an  armchair  opposite  the 
ruined  village  church,  calmly  encouraged 
his  men  to  press  on  tlirough  the  flaming 
and  shell-swept  street.  Many  such  calm 
leaders  had  the  war  produced  in  the  French 
Army. 

At  noon  (October  26)  it  looked,  however,  as 
if  the  enemy  would  reach  Pervyse.  "  The 
gradual  progress  made  by  the  Germans,"  says 
an  observer,  "  could  be  marked  by  the  way  in 
wliich  their  bursting  shells  approached  nearer 
and  nearer  to  Furnes.  Amidst  the  din  could 
be  heard  the  rattle  of  continuous  rifle  fire  and 
the  ceaseless  pap-pap-pap  of  the  machine  guns." 
Large  numbers  of  the  Belgians  began  to  file 
off  to  the  rear.  About  3  p.m.  so  critical  had 
affairs  become  that  the  Belgian  Staff  left 
Furnes  for  Poperinghe.  Tliree  hundred  of  the 
worst  wounded  in  Furnes  were  hastily  em- 
barked   on    the    Red    Cross    train    for    Calais. 


THE    GERMANS    IN    FLANDERS. 
Troopers  outside  a  destroyed  factory  take  up  a  position  behind  an  overturned  gun. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


473 


Most  of  them  would  probably  die  on  the 
journey,  but  they  preferred  to  run  any  risk  to 
that  of  falling  into  the  hands  of  the  exponents 
of  KiUtur.  "  They  knew  as  well  as  we  did," 
observes  Mr.  Souttar,  a  surgeon  who  assisted 
at  their  entraining,  "  that  they  were  not  fight- 
ing against  a  civilized  nation,  but  against  a 
gang  of  organized  savages."* 

The  hospitals  in  Furnes  were  three  hours 
later  sent  off  to  Poperinghe.  The  fine  avenue 
"  running  between  glorious  trees  "  from  Furnes 
to  Ypres  was  crowded  with  fugitives — boys 
and  girls,  women,  old  men — some  push- 
ing wheelbarrows  and  perambulators,  others 
driving  or  sitting  in  carts.  Every  vehicle  was 
laden  with  such  articles  as  could  be  hastily 
collected  from  houses  and  cottages.  To  the 
right  and  left  of  the  road  were  encamped 
African  troops  in  their  bright  robes.  At 
Oostvleteren  a  cross-road  goes  south  through 
sleepy  villages  and  hop-fields  to  Poperinghe. 
Here  all  was  peace.  "  Little  cliildren,"  says 
Mr.  Souttar,  "  looked  up  from  their  games  in 
astonishment  as  we  rolled  by."  Children  were 
playing  by  the  roadside,  and  cattle  slowly 
wending  their  way  to  their  stalls.  In  the 
great  square  of  Poperinghe,  along  one  side  of 
which  was  drawn  up  a  squadron  of  French 
cavalry  in  bright  blue  and  silver  uniforms, 
were  collected  ambulance  wagons,  guns,  and 
ammunition     trains.       Between     these     foot- 

*   "  A  Surgeon  in  Belgium,"  by  H.  S.  Souttar  (Edward 
Arnold),  p.  140. 


soldiers  passed  to  and  fro.  The  men  and 
machinery  of  war  were  awaiting  orders  to 
proceed  to  Armentieres,  Ypres,  Dixmude,  or 
Fumes. 

Later  in  the  day  Mr.  Souttar  returned  to 
Furnes  for  stores.  "  It  was  a  glorious  night," 
he  writes,  "  and  one  had  the  advantage  of  a 
clear  road.  We  were  driving  northwards,  and 
the  sky  was  lit  up  by  the  flashes  of  the  guns 
at  Nieuport  and  Dixmude,  whilst  we  could  hear 
their  dull  roar  in  the  distance.  All  along  the 
road  were  encamped  the  Turcos,  and  their 
camp  fires,  with  the  dark  forms  huddled  around 
them,  gave  a  picturesque  touch  to  the  scene." 

Since  his  journey  into  Poperinghe,  the  posi- 
tion had  changed  for  the  better.  The  French 
and  Belgian  artillery,  firing  at  very  short 
ranges,  had  deluged  the  advancing  Germans 
with  shrapnel  and  case  shot. 

From  the  villages  in  rear  of  the  Allied  lines 
reserves  had  been  pushed  forward,  and  had 
established  at  points  a  new  line  of  trenches. 
The  Germans  had  in  the  end  sullenly  retired ; 
many  had  surrendered  and  the  remainder  had 
taken  refuge  in  their  trenches  in  front  or  behind 
the  Yser. 

The  Belgian  Staff  on  the  26th  slept  not  in 
Poperinghe  but  in  Furnes. 

Meantime  a  strange  and  alarming  event  had 
happened  at  Dixmude.  The  information  which 
Rear- Admiral  Ronarc'h  received  from  the 
Belgian  Staff  on  the  evening  of  the  25th  that 
the   inundation  was   about  to   commence  had 


FRENCH    SUCCESS    IN    BELGIUM. 
Guns  aod  a  Taube  captured  from  the  Germans. 


474 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAIl. 


■come  at  an  opportune  moment.  That  night 
the  weakness  of  his  position  had  been 
brought  home  to  tlie  Admiral  by  an  occur- 
rence which  showed  that  his  system  of 
defence  by  trenches  and  barbed  wire  wa^ 
defective  or  that  his  Marines  were  becoming 
exhausted. 

At  7  p.m.  on  the  25th,  one  of  liis  companies 
marching  to  the  trenches  south  of  the  town  had 
run  into  a  body  of  Germans  who  had  apparently 
slipped  through  the  lines.  The  Marines  after  a 
short  hand-to-hand  fight  put  the  Germans  to 
flight,  and  up  to  2  a.m.  there  was  no  further 
disturbance.  No  sounds  were  to  be  heard  but 
those   of   the   falling   rain   and   the   occasional 


German  bombardment.  In  spite  of  orders, 
the  firing  however  continued,  and  the  Admiral 
sent  an  officer  to  reconnoitre.  The  officer 
proceeded  to  the  bank  of  the  canal,  but  met  no 
signs  of  the  enemy.  The  fusillade  behind  him 
ceased  but,  on  returning,  he  ran  into  a  French 
ambulance.  It  was  in  the  hands  of  Germans 
who  were  promptly  secured. 

When  day  broke  on  the  26th  the  mystery  of 
the  firing  was  cleared  up.     A  German  detach- 


movements  of  sentinels  and  patrols.  Suddenly 
there  was  an  alarm.  Firing  was  heard  from 
the  direction  of  the  railway  station  of  Caes- 
kerke,  the  Admiral's  headquarters.  It  was 
followed  by  the  half  muffled  sounds  of  a  hand- 
to-hand  struggle.  Then  there  burst  out  sud- 
denly the  shrill  tones  of  trumpets  sounding  the 
assembly  and  cries  of  "  To  Arms  !  ' '  Perceiving 
that  the  shots  came  from  the  interior  and  not 
from  the  exterior  of  the  lines,  the  officers  at 
Caeskerke  shouted  to  their  men  to  cease  fire. 
Doubtless  a  false  alarm  had  been  given  by 
some  excited  sentinel.  Some  man's  nerves 
jiad    broken    under    the    strain    of    the    recent 


INUNDATIONS    O.N    THE    YSER. 

A  scene  near  Ramscappelle. 

Top    picture ;    Belgian    outpost    sentry    guarding    a 

dyke    bank  near  Nieuport. 

Bottom  picture  :    On  the  Yser. 

ment  had  apparently  glided  along  the  railway 
line.  Doctor  Duguet  and  the  Abb6  Le  Helloeo, 
who  at  the  noise  of  the  firing  had  risen  from 
their  straw  couches  and  rushed  into  the  street, 
were  wounded.  Before  Doctor  Duguet  died  the 
Abbe  had  given  hmi  absolution.  The  band  of 
Germans  passed  on  and  reached  an  ambulance, 
whose  attendants  they  seized  and  dragged  along 
with  them.  Commandant  Jeanniot,  who  had 
displayed  such  courage  at  the  assault  of  Beerst 
on  the  19th,  dashed  out  of  his  house  to  ascertain 
what  was  happening.  In  his  excitement  he 
had  forgotten  to  pick  up  his  pistol.  Supposing 
that  there  was  a  jianic  and  mistaking  the  Ger- 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


475 


mans  tor  some  of  his  own  men  he  had  run 
towards  the  enemy,  who  made  him  prisoner 
and  with  shouts  of  "  Hoch,  Hoch  !  "  continued 
to  advance  on  the  bridge  over  the  Yser.  Some 
of  the  Germans  (with  the  prisoners)  had  already 
crossed  when  the  ofificer  commanding  the 
guard  at  the  Grand-Pont  turned  on  them  fu'st  a 
searchUght  and  then  his  mitrailleuses.  The 
bridge  was  covered  with  dead  and  wounded, 
and  those  of  the  enemy  who  were  on  the  point 
of  crossing  it  scattered  and  hid  in  the  ruins  of 
the  town.  As  for  the  head  of  the  column,  it 
sought  to  escape  across  the  fields  to  the  German 
trenches.  Jeanniot  and  the  other  prisoners 
were  an  encumbrance  and  might  prove  a  danger. 
They  were,  of  course,  massacred.  "  Prisoners 
may  be  put  to  death,"  says  the  German  General 


*   "The  Germim  War  Hook,"  translntod  by  Professor 
J.  II.  Jloryan,  M.A.  (John  Murra>;.  i)|i.  Til   4. 


476 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


of  overwhelming  necessity,  as  reprisals,  either 
against  similar  measures  or  against  other 
irregularities  on  the  part  of  the  mianagement 
of  the  enemy's  Army."  * 

An  episode  of  this  kind  which  might  have  led 
to  the  capture  of  Dixmude-  had  naturally 
disturbed  Ronarc'h,  and  he  asked  for  reinforce- 
ments. Two  battalions  of  Senegalese  were 
sent  from  Loo  to  his  support.  During  the 
day  of  the  26th  Dixmude  was  again  bom- 
barded, but  the  French  howitzers,  west  of  it, 
kept  of^  the  German  infantry  from  attacking 
the  trenches  till  nightfall,  when  another 
charge  on  them  was  made.     The  mitrailleuses 


IN    A    GERMAN    TRENCH    BEHIND   THE 

YSER. 

Germans  cleaning  up  their  kits. 

stuck,  but  headed  by  Lieutenant  Martin  de 
Pallieres,  the  Marines  with  their  bayonets 
flimg  off  their  assailants,  many  of  whom  were 
schoolboys  worn  out  by  long  vigils  in  the 
trenches,  by  the  inclement  weather  and  by 
insufficient  nourishment. 

The  next  day  (October  27)  the  first  effects 
of  the  efforts  of  M.  Kogge  and  his  assistants  at 
Nieuport  to  flood  the  district  between  the  Yser 
and  the  railway  embankment  became  apparent 
to  the  Belgians.  That  their  trenches  were 
an  inch  or  so  deeper  in  water  does  not  seem  to 
have  distiu-bed  the  Germans.     The  rain  and  the 

*  "  Tho  German  War  Book,"  translated  by  Professor 
J.  H.  Morgan,  M.A.  (John  Murray),  p.  73. 


damp  nature  of  the  soil  would  account  for 
that  phenomenon,  and  the  soldiers  were  so 
tired  out  by  the  fighting  of  Monday  and  the 
previous  days  that  it  may  have  escaped  their 
notice.  At  any  rate,  though  every  minute 
they  delayed  in  their  attack  on  Nieuport 
was  of  vital  importance  to  them,  they  showed 
no  unusual  activity  on  the  27th.  The  defenders 
of  Dixmude,  indeed,  spent  almost  a  peaceful 
day.  Between  the  railway  and  the  canal 
there  were  some  insignificant  engagements, 
and  two  British  cruisers  and  a  torpedo 
boat,  directed  from  a  captive  naval  balloon, 
bombarded  the  German  lines  south  of 
Nieuport. 

The  27th,  the  twelfth  day  of  the  long-drawn 
struggle,  was  virtually  a  contest  between  the 
guns  of  the  two  armies,  but  how  differently 
would  the  Duke  of  Wurtemberg  have  behaved 
had  he  known  that  the  inundation  had  begun  ; 
how  feverish  would  have  been  the  activity  of 
his  troops,  if  they  could  have  heard  what  a 
French  ofilicer  who  had  motored  from  Ver- 
sailles told  a  Times  correspondent  in  Fumes 
at  5.30  a.m.  that  morning  !  He  had  passed, 
said  the  officer,  a  continuous  stream  of  motor 
transport  stretching  out  along  the  road  for 
a  hundred  kilometres  (sixty  miles).  With 
the  Germans  caught  in  the  trap,  Joffre  and  Foch 
were  hurrying  northward  in  auto-omnibuses, 
taxicabs,  motor  lorries,  some  of  those  reserves 
of  men  and  munitions  which  they  had  been  so 
carefully  and  cautiously  husbanding. 

Perhaps  informed  of  this  movement  which 
threatened  to  snatch  the  coveted  Calais  from 
his  grasp,  and  certainly  now  aware  of  the 
inundation,  the  Duke  of  Wui-temberg  on  Wed- 
nesday, the  28th,  again  attacked  all  along  the 
line  ;  he  hoped  to  win  Nieuport,  the  railway 
from  Nieuport  to  Dixmude,  and  Dixmude 
before  the  floods  retarded  his  further  progress. 
Under  the  fire  of  the  12-inch  guns  of  H.M.S. 
Venerable  and  other  cruisers,  and  of  the  sloops 
and  gunboats  which  Rear-Admiral  Hood 
had  summoned  from  the  English  ports,  the 
Germans  advanced  down  the  coast  on  Nieuport. 
"From  the  muzzles  of  the  12-inch'' guns,"  an 
eye-witness  tells  us,  "  came  a  thin  puff  of  smoke, 
envelopiag  a  great  ball  of  fire,  which  seemed  to 
rush  from  the  muzzle  a  yard  or  two  and  then 
move  back  towards  it  a  little  before  vanishing. 
The  huge  shells  could  be  seen  smashing  in  the 
German  Unes,  the  fall  of  each  marked  by  a  pall 
of  green-black  smoke."  Nevertheless  Lom- 
bartzyde  was  evacuated  by  the  Allies. 


BRITISH    MONITORS    IN 

ACTION   OFF  THE    BELGIAN 

COAST. 

The  monitors,  being  of  light  draught,   approached  close  to  the  siiorc  of  the  Belgi  in  coast.       So  close  to 
land    did    they    come,    that    the    crews    even    fired    with   rifles    at    the    enemy.        1  he    portrait    at    top    is 
of  Rear- Admiral  the  Hon.  H.  Hood,  the  Commander.     Bottom  left  :  Lieutenant-Commander  R.  A.  Wilson 
(Monitor  Mersey),  and  on  right,  Commander  A.   L.   Sn.igge   (Monitor   Humher.) 

477 


47J^ 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAB. 


THE    MAIN    STREET,    RAMSCAPPELLE. 
Most  of  the  towns  and  villages  in  Belgium  present  the  same  appearance — wrecked  beyond  recognition. 


The  effect  of  the  fire  from  the  British  ships 
may  be  gathered  from  the  accoiint  furnished 
that  day  by  a  German  soldier  to  a  Dutch 
journalist. 

"  Tlie  bayonet  attacks  were  fearful.  Some  of  the 
combatants  were  pierced  from  breast  to  back.  It  was 
hell.  There  we  stood  in  trenches,  sometimes  breast- 
high  in  water — and  that  awful  sea  firing  !  ^\"e  could  see 
the  ships  lying  there.  We  got  the  attack  from  the  side. 
Bodies  lay  in  heaps.  Many  were  killed  too  in  the  region 
of  Middelkerke  and  the  canal.  It  was  indeed  sometimes 
red  with  blood.  (My  informant  meant  the  canal  iiom 
Ostend  to  Nieuport,  which  also  played  a  part  in  this 
battle.)  Yes,  it  was  hell,  and  if  you've  a  wife  and 
cliildren —  "  (the  man  burst  into  tears). 

"  All  soldiers  arc  not  warriors,"  I  ventured  to  say. 

"  No,"  he  replied  ;  "many  are  longing  earnestly  for 
the  end — for  home,  wife,  and  children.  The  stream  of 
volvmteers  was  very  great  but,  alas  !  when  they  are 
actually  in  the  fight  for  a  moment  some  of  them  in 
£inguish  call  upon  fathers  and  mothers,  and  one  could 
do  nothing  with  them.  There  was  enough  to  eat ;  but 
weariness,  shock,  the  fear  of  death,  all  this  broke  the 
soldiers."' 

South  of  the  canal,  which  from  Nieuport 
joins  the  Canal  de  Ghent,  the  Germans  across 
the  Yser  at  St.  Georges  also  assaulted  the  town, 
beliind  which  lay  the  machinery  causing  the 
inundation.  Nearer  Dixmude,  they  endeavoured 
from  the  loop  of  the  Yser  to  get  astride  of  the 
railway  at  Ramscappelle  and  Pervyse,  and  to 
penetrate  between  those  villages  to  Boitshoucke 
and  thence  to  Furnes  where  five  shells  from 
their  28  cm.  howitzers  dropped  that  day  just 
short  of  the  railway  station. 

Impressed  by  the  fact  that  reinforcements 
were  arriving  the  Allies  stuck  to  their  trenches. 
The  Belgians  scarcely  needed  to  be  reminded 
by  their  King  in  the  following  proclamation 
of  the  issues  at  stake. 

Soldiers,  our  towns  aie  burnt,  our  homes  annihilated, 
there  is  mourning  upon  our  beloved  Fatherland.     But 


still  crueller  things  will  befall  our  compatriots  if  you  do 
not  deliver  them  from  the  invader.  It  is  an  imperative 
duty  for  you.  You  can  deliver  our  Fatherland  with  the 
help  of  our  brave  Alhes. 

The  shout  of  "  Louvain  !  Termonde  !  "  wliich 
rose  from  the  Belgian  Army  on  the  Yser  was  the 
reply  to  the  words  of  the  King.  And  once  more 
the  wearied  soldiers  attacked  the  eneiny  with 
the  bayonet. 

The  Germans  also  fought  energetically. 
Ditches  and  dykes  were  overflowing,  and  water 
pouring  down  the  high  bank  of  the  Yser  Canal 
into  the  fields.  Every  private  perceived  the 
snare  laid  for  the  Duke  of  Wiu"temberg,.  but 
with  task-masters  who  flogged  them  forward 
and  even  turned  machine  guns  on  to  them, 
retreat  seemed  the  more  dangerous  alternative. 
By  sunset  they  were  still  in  swarms  round 
Rainscappelle  and  Pervyse.  Ronarc'h  and  his 
heroic  band,  shelled  most  of  the  day  by  heavy 
and  light  artillery — to  which  the  French 
howitzers  had  made  some  reply — in  the  evening 
had  had  to  beat  off  another  violent  assault  on 
the  south  of  Dixmude. 

The  battle  was  resmned  on  Thursday,  the 
29th.  Dixmude  was  merely  bombarded,  while 
the  Duke  of  Wurtemberg  aimed  blow  after 
blow  at  the  Allied  centre  from  Per\-j-se  to 
Ramscappelle.  He  did  not  yet  regard  himself 
as  beaten  and  still  might  lay  his  hands  on  the 
Nieuport  sluices.  With  their  numerous  " '  table- 
tops  "  (light,  roughly-constructed  but  strong 
portable  platforms  on  legs  which  could  be 
thrown  across  rivulets  as  bridges)  his  infantry 
might  manage  to  make  their  way  across  the 
artificial  lake  wliich,  excej)t  at  the  points  where 
there  were  ditches  and  dykes,  could  be  fcrded 
by  cavalry  and  even  by  infantry.     His  advanced 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR, 


479 


MAP   'iHOWING    THE    INUNDATED   AREA   ON    THE    YSER.      THE    INUNDATION    IS 

SHOWN    DOTTED. 


480 


THE    TIMES    HJSTOnV    OF    THE    WAR. 


guard  was  on  part  of  the  riin  of  tlic  inundated 
district.  If  he  could  take  Ramscappelle  and 
cross  the  Furnes-Nieuport  Canal,  he  nxight 
isolate  Nieuport  or  seize  Furnes,  which  could  be 
attacked  from  Ramscappelle,  Boitchoucke,  or 
Pervyse.  The  tremendous  effort  being  made 
on  his  left  to  crumple  up  the  Allied  .Axmy  round 
Ypres  was  calculated  to  prevent  Joffre  and  Foch 
largely  rein'crcing  Grossetti  and  the  Belgians. 
So  long  as  it  was  humanly  possible  to  continue 
the  attack,  it  was  the  Duke's  duty  to  do  so  in 
order  to  influence  the  centre  and  right  of  the 
Allied  Army  engaged  in  this  gigantic  battle. 
To  keep  the  French  reserves  in  the  plain  north 
of  the  ridge  of  the  Mont-des-Cats  was  well 
worth  sacrificing  liis  "  cannon  fodder." 

During  the  afternoon  the  offensive  was,  there- 
fore, resumed,  and  that  night  in  a  violent  storm 
of  wind  and  rain  Ramscappelle  was  at  last 
captured,  and  so  dangerous  for  the  Allies  was  the 
situation  at  Pervyse,  that  Ronarc'h  depleted  liLs 
scanty  garrison  roimd  Dixmude  and  sent  to  the 
latter  village  two  companies  of  Marines. 

The  morning  of  Friday,  the  30th,  dawned. 
Five  French  torpedo-boat  destroyers  had  been 
added  to  Rear-Admiral  Hood's  flotilla.  He 
hoisted  liis  flag  on  the  Intrepide  and  led  the 
French  ships  into  action  ofl  Lombartzyde.  The 
French  and  British  destroyers  guarded  the 
larger  vessels  from  submarines,  whose  presence 
was  betrayed  by  periscopes,  and  from  their 
torpedoes.  From  the  Dunes  the  German 
howitzers  hurled  their  huge  shells.  The 
Amazon  had  been  badly  holed ;  Lieutenant 
Wauton  commanding  the  Falcon  and  eight 
seamen  on  it  had  been  killed,  eighteen  disabled. 
The  monitor,  Mersey,  during  the  operations 
had  had  its  6-in.  gim  turret  disabled  and 
received  several  shots  on  the  water-line. 

The  Germans  were  in  front  of  Nieuport  ; 
they  were  barricaded  in  Ramscappelle  and  along 
the  railwaj'  to  the  north  and  south  of  it  ;  but 
between  the  railway  and  the  canal  the  inunda- 
tion was  slowly  and  steadily  advancing  towards 
Pervyse.  All  day  the  battle  raged  for  the 
possession  of  Ramscappelle,  the  railway  em- 
bankment and  Pervyse.  The  former  village 
was   taken   and   retaken   by   the    French   and 


Belgians,  Pervyse   remained    in    the    hands   of 
the  Allies. 

At  daybreak  on  the  31st  Ramscappelle  was 
bombarded.  The  Germans  finding  the  village 
untenable  advanced  westward  from  it.  The 
moment  for  which  the  Allies  had  been  waiting 
in  the  small  hours  had  come.  The  bugles 
sounded  the  charge,  and  the  French  and  Belgian 
infantry,  under  a  hail  of  shot  and  slirapnel 
and  in*  face  of  batteries  of  machine-guns 
pouring  lead  as  a  hose  pours  water,  rushed 
forward  with  a  courageous  and  irresistible 
impetus.  Tlie  distance  between  the  two 
lines  rapidly  diminished.  The  assailants  were 
soon  300  yards,  200  yards,  and  then  but  50 
yards  from  the  foe  ;  which  side  would  give  way  ? 
For  a  second  the  issue  was  in  the  balance. 
Then,  with  a  mighty  shout,  the  AUied  troops 
luu-led  themselves  on  the  Germans,  and  drove 
them  headlong  backwards  to  Ramscappelle 
and  the  railway.  Seven  mitrailleases  were 
capttired  and  300  prisoners  taken.  The  ground 
was  littered  with  the  dead  and  dymg. 

In  Ramscappelle  the  Germans  ralUed,  and 
there  was  a  terrible  struggle  at  handy - 
strokes.  But  the  Alhes  would  not  be  denied, 
and  still  pressed  onward  drivmg  their  foes 
before  them.  In  vain  did  the  German  officers 
with  threats,  curses,  blows,  and  even  shots 
from  their  pistols  try  to  keep  their  soldiers 
from  tlirowing  down  their  weapons  and  evacua- 
ting the  village.  Fear  had  overtaken  this  once 
brave  host,  and  by  9  a.m.  Ramscappelle  was 
lost  to  them.  An  horn*  later  the  Alhes  were 
over  the  railway  embankment.  Then  the 
"  seventy-fives  "  were  brought  up  at  a  gallop 
and  poured  a  hail  of  shell  on  the  demoralized 
German  infantry  wading  frantically  tlirough 
the  water  towards  the  canal.  Rifles  and 
machine  guns  joined  in  the  work  of  destruction, 
and  the  placid  lake  between  the  railway  and  the 
canal  was  soon  dotted  with  drowning  Germans 
fallen  from  the  demoralized  crowds  struggling 
to  reach  a  haven  of  safety  over  the  bridges 
at  St.  Georges,  Schoorbakke,  and  Tervaete. 

The  crisis  of  the  Battle  of  the  ,Yser  was  over  ; 
the  Germans  had  made  their  great  effort  and 
had  failed. 


CHAPTER   LXIV. 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  REBELLION. 


Origins  of  the  Rebeixion — A  Political  Movement — The  South  African  Dutch  and  their 
Leaders— The  Botha -Hertzog  Quarrel — Rival  Ideals — Hertzog's  Fall — His  Responsi- 
bility— Rebel  Leaders — Maritz's  Intrigues — The  Prophet  Van  Rensburg— Death  of 
de  la  Rey — Maritz  Rebels — Outbreak  in  Transv.\al  and  Orange  Free  State — Negotiations 
WITH  Rebels — Defeat  of  Bey'ers  and  de  Wet — De  Wet  Surrenders — Death  of  Beyers — 
End  of  the  Rebellion. 


IT  would  be  easy  to  say  that  the  rebellion 
which  broke  out  in  South  Africa  soon 
after  war  was  declared  in  Europe  was 
the  result  of  German  intrigue — easy, 
but  superficial.  German  intrigue  had  no  doubt 
a  good  deal  to  do  with  the  rebellion.  The 
rebel  leaders  had  long  looked  forward  to  the 
day  when  a  conflict  with  Germany  should  give 
them  the  opportunity  of  making  with  some 
hope  of  success  an  attempt  to  restore  republican 
rule  in  South  Africa.  What  is  known  already 
about  the  efforts  of  Germany  before  the  war 
to  prepare  the  way  by  organizing  such  elements 
of  discontent  wherever  they  seemed  to  exist 
in  the  British  Empire  makes  it  quite  certain 
that  the  obvious  oiDiJortunities  of  South 
Africa  did  not  escape  the  vigilance  and  industry 
of  the  German  Secret  Service.  We  know,  too, 
what  hopes  were  built  in  Germany  itself  upon 
the  possibilities  of  revolt  in  South  Africa. 
We  have  the  word  of  the  South  African  Govern- 
ment for  the  existence  on  a  large  scale  of 
a  system  of  German  propaganda  in  many 
districts  in  South  Africa.  And,  lastly,  the 
speeches  and  manifestoes  of  the  rebel  leaders 
show  that  they  had  great  expectations  of 
Vol.  ITT.— Part  39. 


German  aid  in  men,  and,  more  important 
than  men,  in  supplies  of  heavy  guns,  ammuni- 
tion, and  equipment.  The  evidence  of  (he 
extent  to  which  all  this  had  gone  is  still  in  the 
hands  of  the  South  African  Government.  It 
will  be  revealed  when  the  proper  time  comes. 
Meanwhile,  it  is  as  well  not  to  assign  too  great 
an  in^portance  to  these  machinations  of  the 
enemy.  There  were  elements  in  South  Africa 
which  had  made  for  rebellion  long  before 
August  1914.  Whether  they  would  actually 
have  brought  rebellion  about  if  there  had  been 
no  war  is  uncertain.  But  it  is  certain  that 
rebellion  was  their  natvu'al  consequence,  and 
that  German  intrigue  was  the  breeze  that 
fanned  the  smouldering  fires  of  revolt  into  a 
flame,  nuich  more  than  the  match  wliich  first 
set  it  burning. 

The  South  Africaji  rebellion  was  a  political 
movement  carried  to  its  logical  extreme.  Its 
inilitary  significance  was  slight,  though  it 
miglit  have  been  far  more  serious.  Not  as  a 
campaign  can  it  have  any  groat  interest  for 
the  student  o;  the  war  ;  but  as  a  revelation  of 
the  problems  that  had  to  be  solved  by  Great 
Britain  in  South  Africa,  6is  a  test  of  the  efficacy 


481 


48-2 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


THE    PREMIER    OF    SOUTH    AFRICA    AND    HIS    FAMILY    AT     GROOTE    SCHUUR. 

Mrs.   Botha,   Miss  Frances  Botha,   General  Louis  Botha,  Captain  Louis  Botha,   Headquarter  StaflF ; 
Mr.  John  Botha,  Cape  Town  Highlanders  ;  and  Mr.   Philip  Botha. 


of  the  solution  that  had  been  attempted  long 
before  the  war  came,  as  a  criterion  of  the 
ultimate  eflficacy  of  that  solution.  It  cannot, 
in  fact,  be  regarded  as  an  isolated  and  inexplic- 
able outbreak,  hopeless  from  the  first,  speedily 
suppressed.  It  was  much  more  than  that, 
and  to  make  clear  its  objects  and  its  chances  of 
success  its  relation  to  the  history  of  South 
Africa  since  the  end  of  the  Boer  War  must  be 
investigated  and  explained. 

The  history  of  the  Dutch-speaking  race  in 
South  Africa  is  largely  the  product  of  the 
personality  of  its  leaders.  The  reason  for 
this  is  not  difficult  to  understand.  They  lived, 
most  of  I  hem,  isolated  lives.  They  were  a 
farming  people,  and  in  South  Africa  the  farms 
were  large.  The  defects  of  their  racial  character 
were  mostly  due  to  this  fact.     They  were  not 


a  highly  educated  people.  Their  beliefs,  their 
habits,  their  methods  of  agriculture  were  all 
primitive.  The  organization  of  their  social 
system  was  still  patriarchal.  The  family,  with 
its  flocks  and  herds,  was  the  unit.  Upon  it 
was  grafted  three  characteristics,  each  of  which 
had  a  strong  influence  on  their  development. 
They  were  a  land-owning  people,  and,  as  the 
family  grew,  a  progressive  sub-division — in 
legal  right  though  not  in  practice — of  the  land 
belonging  to  the  family  went  with  it.  They 
lived  in  a  land  where  native  labour  was  at  hand 
to  do  all  the  manual  work  and  so  became 
inevitably  more  the  masters  of  labour  than 
labourers  on  the  land  themselves.  Their 
religious  belief  was  a  fervent,  if  narrow, 
Calvinism.  Among  a  people  with  whom 
reading  was  in  little  favour  this  intensity  of 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


4S8 


religious  belief  gave  the  minister  of  religion— 
the  Predikant — an  immense  influence.  It 
followed  from  these  three  conditions  of  their 
life  that  they  grew  to  believe  in  themselves 
as  a  kind  of  chosen  race,  specially  favoiu-ed 
by  Providence,,  given  South  Africa  as  a  dwelling- 
place  and  expressly  appointed  to  rule  over  the 
native  population  for  its  good.  With  thepe 
strong  traditions  they  combined  an  indi- 
vidualism created  by  the  hard  struggle  that 
they  had  with  Nature  in  that  land  of  sparse 
rainfall,  of  thronging  plagues  and  blights 
on  beast  and  crop,  of  immense  distances.  Add 
as  a  culminating  element  in  the  formation  of 
Dutch  racial  character  two  facts :  first,  that 
the  tradition  of  ordered  government  and  of 
respect  for  constituted  authority  was  strong 
in  them.  Second,  that  combination  was 
constantly  imposed  vipon  them  as  the  one  con- 
dition of  success  in  early  wars  against  the 
natives,  and  that  where  they  were  so  few  and 
the  natives  so  manj%  success  could  only  be 
won  by  matching  the  cunning  of  their  enemies 
by  a  superior  craft  and  the  overwhelming 
native  superiority  in  numbers  by  better  weapons 
and  a  more  resolute  courage.  Throughout 
the  early  history  of  the  South  African  Dutch 
a  leader  of  exceptional   ability  was  always  a 


necessity  for  survival  and  was  always  found. 
AN'hen  the  small  Transvaal  Republic  found 
itself  threatened  by  the  stream  of  British 
pioneers  that  poured  north  to  exploit  the  riches 
of  the  goldfields.  President  Kruger  was  surely 
established  as  the  leader  of  his  people  in  the 
north.  In  the  Cape,  after  peace  with  the 
natives  had  made  possible  responsible  go\  ern- 
nieiit  under  the  British  Crown,  the  Dutch 
found  it  necessary  to  organize  politically  if 
their  traditional  claims  were  not  to  be  aban- 
doned. Here,  too,  there  was  need  for  a  leader. 
He  appeared  in  the  person  of  Jan  Hofmeyr, 
whose  word  was  law  to  the  Dutch  of  the  Capo 
through  many  years  of  jjolitical  conflict. 
When  the  Tran.svaal  took  up  arms  against 
Great  Britain  and  Paul  Kruger  was  too  old  to 
lead   her   troops   in   the   field,   natural   leaders 


MEN    WHO    CRUSHED    THE    REBELS. 
General  Smuts  delivering  his  famous  speech  at  Johannesburg.     Inset  :  General  Smuts. 


484 


THE     TIMES    HISTOBY    OE     THE     WAH. 


SPECIAL    CONSTABLES    ON    A    ROUTE    MARCH. 
Town  Police  section  of  Pretoria  who  volunteered  to  do  night  duty  in  order  to  release  the 

South  African  Police  for  active  service. 


of  men  appeared  from  the  ranks  of  the  com- 
mandoes and  were  followed  because  they 
proved  their  capacity.  They  were  Louis 
Botha,  de  la  Rey,  Smuts,  and  Beyers  in  the 
Transvaal  ;  in  the  Orange  Free  State  President 
Steyn  and  Christian  de  Wet. 

The  Boer  War  ended  on  May  31,  1902. 
Twelve  years  and  a  few  months  later  the  Boer 
leaders  who  had  won  eminence  during  the  war 
were  ranged  against  each  other  in  the  field. 
Botha  and  Smuts  were  Ministers  of  the  Crown, 
the  Jourdan  and  the  Carnot  of  the  King's 
forces  in  South  Africa.  De  la  Rey  was  dead, 
shot  by  accident  upon  the  threshold  of  rebellion, 
whether  he  knew  that  he  stood  there  or  not. 
Beyers  and  de  Wet  were  rebel  leaders  in  the 
field.  And  every  Dutchman  in  the  country 
looked  anxiously  towards  Onze  Rust — the  farm 
near  Bloemfontein  where  ex-President  Stej-n 
nursed  the  shattered  remnant  of  health  that 
the  war  had  left  him — looked,  and  wondered 
whether  he  would  speak  the  word  that  would 
leave  Beyers  and  de  Wet  with  only  the  desperate 
remnant  of  a  following.  The  history  of  these 
men  during  those  twelve  years  is  very  largely 
the  lustory  of  South  Africa.  The  loyalty  to 
them  of  the  Dutch-speaking  people  was  con- 
stant and  unshaken.  VVhen  they  split  into 
two  sections  and  went  their  different  ways,  the 
Dutch  split  also  and  followed — most  Botha  and 
Smuts  ;  the  rest  ex-President  Steyn,  Beyers, 
de  Wet.  and  Steyn's  lieutenant  and  mouth- 
piece in  politics,  Hertzog. 

In   this  breach   between   the   Dutch   leaders 


Botha  was  the  protagonist  on  the  one  side, 
Hertzog  on  the  other.  But  Hertzog  spoke  and 
acted  in  all  essentials  as  the  representative  of 
ex-President  Steyn,  though  with  a  personal 
violence  and  a  passion  of  individual  conviction 
that  constantly  exaggerated  his  own  importance 
and  obscured  the  hand  of  ex-President  Steyn 
which  guided  him.  The  breach  had  thus -two 
sides.  It  was  a  personal  quarrel,  and  a  very 
violent  personal  quarrel,  between  Botha  and 
Hertzog.  But  it  was  also  much  more  than 
that.  It  was  a  definite  and  irreparable  lupture 
between  two  ideals.  Wlien  Botha  won  and 
Hertzog  was  beaten  there  remained  only  two 
courses  for  him  and  those  who  held  the  same 
ideals  as  he  did.  They  could  submit,  or  they 
could  prepare  for  rebellion  and  await  a  favov.r- 
able  moment  for  taking  the  field  in  arms  against 
Botha  and  Great  Britain.  This  statement 
needs  some  superficial  qualification.  Hertzog 
did  not  rebel.  Both  he  and  ex-President 
Steyn  claimed  when  all  was  over  that  they  had 
done  everything  possible  to  prevent  armed 
rebellion.  But  the  rebel  commanders  fought 
for  their  ideals,  inscribed  Hertzog's  name  on 
their  banners,  constantly  assured  their  followers 
that  Hertzog  was  on  the  same  side  as  they 
were  and  approved  everytliing  that  they  did. 
Essentially,  the  verdict  that  the  South  African 
rebellion  was  the  natural  development  of  the 
breach  between  Botha  and  Hertzog  at  the 
end  of  1912  is  beyond  question. 

A  brief  retrosjject^of  the  events  that  led  up 
to  the  qviarrel  will  show  this.     South  African 


THE     TIMES    HISTOBY    OF     THE     WAR. 


485 


history,  between  the  Peace  of  Vereeniging, 
which  ended  the  Boer  War  in  May  1902,  and 
the  rebeUion  at  the  end  of  August  1914,  divides 
itself  naturally  into  tlu'ee  periods.  In  the  first 
period  the  conquered  Republics — the  Transvaal 
and  the  Orange  Free  State — were  governed  as 
Crown  Colonies.  In  the  second  they  received 
responsible  government,  elected  their  own 
representatives  in  Parliament,  and  were  ruled 
by  a  Ministry  of  their  own  choosing.  In  the 
third  they  united  with  the  other  two  South 
African  Colonies,  Cape  Colony  and  Natal,  to 
form  the  Union  of  South  Africa.  The  first 
period  need  not  keep  vis  long.  It  \^'as  a  time 
of  reconstruction  during  which  the  Transvaal 
and  the  Free  State*  were  re-settled  after  the 
war,  their  farmliouses  rebuilt,  their  lands  re- 
stocked and  cultivated  again,  the  whole  fabric 
of  their  normal  life  restored.  Dviring  this 
period  the  Dutch  leaders  in  both  Colonies  took 
practically  no  part  in  the  work  of  government. 
They  stood  on  one  side  and  allowed  the  British 
authorities  to  do  all  they  could  to  restore  the 
destruction  that  war  had  brought.  In  the 
second  period  the  men  who  had  become  leaders 
of  the  Dutch  during  the  war  became  in  both 
Colonies  Ministers  of  the  Crown  and  rulers  of 
the  State.  This  period  also,  but  for  one  thing, 
— the  outbreak  in  the  Free  State  of  open  hos- 
tility by  the  Dutch  towards  tlie  British — need 
not  detain  us  long.  Elsewhere  the  two  I'aces 
lived  side  by  side  in  a  peace  that  was  siu-prising, 

*  The  Orange  Free  State  was  called  the  Orange  River 
Colony  from  the  Peace  of  Vereeniging  till  the  beginning 
of  Union.  It  then  became  a  Province  of  the  Union,  and 
was  again  called  the  Orange  Free  State. 


seeing  how  recently  they  had  been  at  war.  It 
was,  as  everyone  felt,  a  period  of  transition.  The 
tour  Colonies  of  South  Afric-a  were  not  strong 
enough  to  stand  alone.  Tliey  had  no  natural 
boundaries  ;  their  railways  were  a  single  system  ; 
their  peoples,  Dutch  or  British  born,  were  of  the 
same  two  races  and  lived  side  by  side  in  each 
of  the  four  Colonies.  Their  interests  were 
unquestionably  identical  and  Union  meant  no 
great  sacrifice  on  the  part  of  either  of  the  two 
white  races  that  inhabited  tliem.  If  Natal  liad 
a  great  preponderance  of  British  population, 
the  Orange  River  Colony  had  an  equally 
marked  preponderance  of  Dutch.  In  the  Cape 
and  in  the  Transvaal  the  nvmibers  of  the  two 
white  races  were  more  equally  balanced, 
though  in  both  the  Dutch  had  a  sutticient 
Ijolitical  majority  to  keep  their  representatives 
in  power.  Union  of  the  four  States  was  thus 
in  the  air  all  through  this  second  period.  It 
overshadowed  all  other  considerations.  Obvi- 
ously it  could  be  established  only  on  a  basis  of 
peace  between  the  two  white  races.  This  was 
the  reason  why,  though  the  Dutch  were  in 
political  power  in  three  of  the  four  Colonies  so 
soon  after  the  war,  there  was  so  little  open 
racial  dissension. 

There  was  one  exception.  In  the  Orange 
River  Colony  the  period  of  responsible  go\ern- 
ment  saw  the  sudden  rise  to  power  and  influence 
of  "  General  "  Hertzog  and  gave  a  foretaste  of 
the  policy  which  he  was  afterwards  to  develop 
and  elaborate  as  a  member  of  the  first  South 
African  Ministry  under  Union.  This  is  no 
place  for  recalling  in  any  detail  the  educa- 
tional policy  of  Hertzog  in  the   Orange  River 


LOYALIST    TROOPS    IN    BOOVSONS    CAMT,    JOHANNESBURG. 


:]'.) 


4bG 


THE    TIMES    HISTOUY    OF    THE     WAR. 


Colony.  It  caused  acuto  dis>:ension  between 
the  two  white  races.  It  set  even  the  Dutch  of 
the  Orange  River  Colony  by  the  ears,  since  it 
forbade  the  teaching  of  English  as  a  language  in 
the  State  schools  to  any  but  the  elder  children, 
and  many  of  the  Dutch  fully  realized  how 
advantageous  it  was  for  their  children  to  learn 
English  while  they  were  young.  But,  most  of 
all.  it  revealed  the  personal  character  of  General 
Hertzog  and  so  justifies  more  notice  than  could 
otherwise  be  given  to  it  in  an  estimate  of 
the  origins  and  causes  of  the  South  African 
rebellion. 

I\lr.  Hertzog  wa^  commonly  given  the  title 
of  ■■  General  "  by  friends  and  opponents  alike 
in  South  Africa.  It  did  not  mark  any  dis- 
tinguished service  in  the  field,  as  in  the  case  of 
Generals  Botha,  Smuts  Beyers,  and  de  Wet. 
Yet  as  soon  as  the  Free  State  Parliament  met 
he  emerged  as  the  strong  man  of  the  IVIinistry. 
The  Prune  Minister,  Mr.  Abraham  Fischer,  was 
a  barrister  of  considerable  age  and  no  great 
strength  of  character.  The-  other  members  of 
his  Cabinet  were  undistinguished,  except  de 
Wet,  and  he  ne\'er  pretended  to  be  a  politician. 
In  such  company  Hertzog  had  full  play  for  his 
peculiar  gifts  and  every  opportimity  to  give 
effect  to  the  views  which  he  held  with  the 
passionate  strength  of  a  narrow  and  fanatical 


GENERAL    C.    F.    BEYERS, 

One  of  the  Rebel  leaders.     Before  the  Rebellion  he 

was  Commandant-General  of  the  Citizen  Forces. 


GENERAL    MARITZ, 

Who  was,  in  August  1914,  appointed   to  command 

the  Border,   German  South-West  Africa.     One 

of  the  principal  leaders  of  the  rebels. 

character.  Even  so,  without  the  strong  backing 
that  he  received  from  Mr.  Steyn,  who  had  been 
President  of  the  Orange  Free  State  RepubUc 
before  the  war,  Hertzog  would  scarcely  have  won 
to  the  position  which  he  soon  occupied  in  the 
estimation  of  a  section  of  Dutch  South  Africans. 
He  had  certain  very  obvious  qualities.  In 
private  Ufe  he  was  kindly  and  disinterested. 
He  had  courage  and  determination.  He  held, 
with  an  almost  religious  fervour — though 
himself  not  a  rehgious  man  in  the  conventional 
sense — the  full  creed  of  Dutch  South  African 
nationaUty.  He  believed  in  the  prescriptive 
right  of  the  Dutch  to  the  soil  of  South  Africa. 
He  resented  the  presence  of  the  British  and 
looked  on  them  as  interlopers.  He  would  have 
had  South  Africa  remain  a  community  of 
pastoralists,  entirely  cut  off  from  intercourse 
with  European  countries  and  blissfully  remote 
from  the  problems  that  are  created  by  the 
growth  of  great  industries  and  the  population 
that  they  attract.  Appointed  a  Minister  of  the 
Crown,  he  acknowledged  the  duty  of  loyalty  to 
the  Sovereign  of  Great  Britain,  but  foimd  it  not 
inconsistent  with  that  duty  to  enunciate  the 
doctrine  that  in  all  matters  the  claims  of  South 
Africa  must  be  paramount.  "  South  Africa 
first  "  :  this  was  his  motto,  the  text  of  niany  of 
his  public  utterances,  the  test  that  he  would 
apply  to  any  matter  which  concerned  the 
Empire  of  which  the  Orange  River  Colony  had 
become  a  part.  The  test  was  to  be  thoroughly 
applied.  No  sacrifice  of  the  immediate  claims 
of  the  jjart  to  the  welfare  of  the  whole  could  be 
tolerated  for  a  moment.     To  contemplate  such 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


487 


GENERAL    HERTZOG, 
Whose  policy  led  to  rebellion  in  South  Africa. 

a  sacrifice  was  to  be  guilty  of  treachery  to  South 
Africa,  to  be  branded  as  a  "  foreign  adventurer," 
to  be  excluded  once  and  for  all  from  the  company 
of  good  patriots.  His  was  the  whole  gospel  of 
Krugerism,  modified  only  in  appearance  so  as 
to  conform  with  the  changed  conditions  of  a 
country  in  wliich  Krugerism  had  been 
encountered  and  defeated  by  Great  Britain. 
Its  logical  outcome  was  rebellion  as  soon  as 
the  moment  came  when  a  decision  would  have 
to  be  made  between  the  momentary  interests 
of  South  Africa  and  the  welfare  and  safety  of 
the  Empire. 

But  that  was  not  yet.  The  seed  of  this 
doctrine,  however,  fell  in  the  Free  State  upon 
ground  only  too  well  prepared  for  its  reception. 
The  war  was  still  a  thing  of  the  recent  past.  Its 
memories  rankled.  The  Dutch  were  in  a  large 
majority  over  the  British-born  people  of  the 
Colony.  When  they  were  granted  responsible 
government  it  was  inevitable  that  some  at  least 
of  them  should  set  themselves  to  win  again 
what  they  had  lost  through  the  war.  And  the 
British-born  people,  whose  country  had  been 
victorious  in  arms,  found  themselves  as  soon 
as  Parliament  met  at  the  mercy  of  any  man 
svho  should  care  to  be  vindictive.  Hertzog  was 
that  man.  He  had  two  great  grievances,  and  of 
both  he  was  determined  to  make  the  most. 
Crown  Colony  government  had  done  much  for 
the  Free  State.  It  had  built  railways,  resettled 
the  country,  established  schools  on  a  scale 
luilcnown  before.  Under  a  wise  policy  of  State 
research  and  encouragement  farming  had 
flourished.  If  they  had  been  let  alone,  Boer  and 
Briton  might  have  settled  down  to  a  futiu'e  of 


mutual  prosperity.  But  Hertzog  had  his 
grievances.  He  believed  that  the  Crown 
Colony  government  had  attempted  to  crush 
out  the  Dutch  language,  and  lie  was  convinced 
that  the  Dutch  had  not  been  given  their  fair 
share  of  adnainistrative  posts.  He  set  himself 
to  \indicate  the  claims  of  the  Dutch  to  speak 
their  language,  to  penalize  English,  and  to 
take  a  part  in  the  administration  of  the  coimtry 
proportionate  to  their  preponderance  in  popu- 
lation over  the  British.  There  is  no  need  to 
go  in  detail  into  the  steps  which  he  took  to 
these  ends.  Their  results  show  their  nature. 
Separate  schools  for  English-speaking  children 
were  established  in  many  of  the  Free  State 
towns,  and  numbers  of  English-speaking 
Civil  Servants  were  driven  out  of  Government 
posts. 

Then  came  the  Union  movement.  It  was 
clear  that  the  Free  State  could  not  stand  out. 
Hertzog  went  as  one  of  the  delegates  to  the 
National  Convention  which  had  been  summoned 
to  draw  up  a  constitution  for  United  South 
Africa.  There  he  met  the  representatives  of  the 
other  colonies :  Generals  Botha  and  Smuts, 
leaders  of  the  Dutch  in  the  Transvaal  ;  Mr. 
Merriman,  Mr.  Sauer  and  Sir  Henry  de  V'illiers, 


GENERAL    CHRISTIAN    DE    WET, 
Who  led  the  rebels  against  the  Union  forces. 


488 


THE     TIMES    IlISTOBY    UF     THE    WAR. 


READY    TO    PURSUE    THE    REBELS. 
Commandant  Collins  and  his  troops,  after  attending  service  at  the  Dutch  Reform  Church, 

leaving  Pretoria. 


all  closely  identified  with  the  Dutch  in  Cape 
Colony  ;  Dr.  .Jameson,  Sir  Percy  Fitzpatrick, 
Sir  George  Farrar,  and  the  leading  men  of 
Xatal,  all  representative  of  the  British  popula- 
tion in  South  Africa.  Ex-President  Steyn  and 
Mr.  Jan  Hofmeyr  were  not  members  of  the 
National  Convention.  The  former  was  too  ill  to 
attend  ;  Mr.  Hofmeyr  had  long  ceased  to  take 
a  public  part  in  the  political  life  of  Cape  Colony, 
though  he  had  still  great  influence  as  a  power 
behind  the  throne.  Union  meant  compromise 
between  the  claims  of  the  Dutch  on  one  side 
and  the  British  on  the  other.  From  the  first 
meeting  of  the  National  Convention  the 
representatives  of  the  British  showed  that  they 
were  prepared  for  compromise.  And  at  once 
there  also  appeared  a  distinct  cleavage  between 
the  moderate  Dutch,  whose  opinions  were 
voiced  by  General  Botha,  Sir  Henry  de  Villiers, 
and  Mr.  Merriman,  and  the  extreme  section  of 
Dutch  nationalists,  championed  by  Mr.  Hertzog. 
The  moderates  prevailed.  Hertzog,  seeing  that 
he  could  not  carry  his  proposals,  gave  way. 
Union  was  formed,  and  General  Botha  became 
the  first  Prime  Minister  of  South  Africa.  His 
Cabinet  included  Hertzog  and  Fischer  and  was 
formed  on  party  lines,  being  composed  of  chosen 
men  from  the  Ministries  in  power  in  the  Cape, 
the  Transvaal,  and  the  Free  State.  All  \\ere 
the  representatives  of  parties  supported  by  the 
Dutch-speaking  section  of  the  South  African 
people. 


From   the   first    it   was   an   ill-assorted    and 
uneasy   combination.     The    cleavage    between 
the  moderate  Dutch  and  the  reactionists  con- 
tinually asserted  itself.     Contradictions  between 
the   speeches   of    Botha   and   Hertzog   became 
more  and  more  frequent  and  glaring.     It  was 
impossible  to  reconcile  them.     General  Botha 
took  office  on  May  31,1910.     The  first  elections 
for  the  South  Afi'ican  Parliament  were  held  in 
September  of  that  year.     The  Unionists,  luider 
the  leadership  of  Sir  Starr  Jameson,*  fought 
the  elections  on  a  platform  which  pledged  theia 
to  support  Botha  in  every  naeasure  that  was 
consistent  with   the   compromise  betv^een  the 
claims   of   British   and   Dutch   which   was   tjie 
basis  of  Union.     They  openly  proclaimed  tlieir 
dislike   of   Hertzog   and   his   views,    and   their 
leader    in    his    election    speeches    foretold    the 
necessity    of    supporting    Botha    against    tlie 
reactionary  section  of  his  party  led  by  Hertzog. 
The  events  of  the  next  eighteen  months  showed 
the  justice  of  this  prediction.     As  the  incon- 
sistencies between  the  convictions  of  Botha  and 
of  Hertzog  on  race  questions  became  more  and 
niore  plain  the   protests   of  the  Unionists  in- 
creased in  frequency  and  in  effect.     In  Decem- 
ber, 1912,  the  end  came.     Botha  at  last  made 
up  his  mind  that  the  speeches  of  Hertzog  could 
not  be  tolerated  any  longer.     He  asked  Hertzog 
to  resign  from  the  Cabinet.     Hertzog  refused. 
Thei-eupon  Botha  resigned  and,  on  the  request 
*  He  received  a  Itnronetey  on  Union  Dav. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


489 


of  the  Governor- General,  formed  a  new  Cabinet. 
Hertzog  was  not  a  member  of  it.  From  iliat 
moment  the  breach  between  the  two  sections 
of  tlie  Dutch  was  complete  and  irreparable. 
Des-perate  efforts  were  made  to  heal  it.  it 
defied  them  all  and  grew  wider  and  wider. 
Personal  dishkes  between  the  rival  leaders 
helped  to  broaden  it.  At  last  Hertzog  was 
defeated  on  a  formal  vote  at  a  conference  of 
supporters  of  the  Botha  Ministry.  He  left  the 
conference  chamber  with  his  following.  A  few 
months  later  he  formed  a  ne\\  party  to  oppose 
Botha. 

It  is  important  to  understand  the  exact 
nature  of  this  breach  between  Botha  and 
Hertzog.  The  views  to  wliich  Hertzog  ga\e 
expression  wliile  he  was  a  member  of  the 
Botha  Ministry  were  the  same  views  as  Beyers, 
Maritz,  and  de  Wet  proclaimed  when  they  went 
into  armed  rebellion  nearlj^  two  years  later. 
They  amounted  to  a  complaint  that  the  Dutch 
were  not  being  fairly  treated  under  Union ; 
that  the  Dutch  language  was  not  in  practice 
being  given  absohite  equaUty  with  Enghsh,  as 
the  Act  of  Union  had  declared  that  it  should 


be  given ;  that  those  who  spoke  Dutch  only 
were  at  a  disadvantage  as  compared  with  those 
who  spoke  only  English,  especially  as  to  their 
chances  of  promotion  in  the  Civil  Service  ;  and, 
generally,  that  the  interests  of  South  Africa 
were  being  sacrificed  to  those  of  the  British 
Empire.  On  these  points  Botha  broke  witli 
Hertzog.  He  took  this  drastic  ste[)  because  he 
believed  that  perpetual  bickering  about  them 
would  be  fatal  to  peace  between  English  and 
Dutch  in  South  Africa,  and  peace  between 
the  two  white  races  were  essential  to  the  pros- 
perity of  the  country.  He  was  right.  The  Hertzog 
policy  led  at  last  to  rebellion  in  South  Africa, 
though  Hertzog  himself  flinched  from  the 
extreme  and  refused  to  take  up  the  arms  of 
the  rebel. 

An  extract  from  a  speech  made  by  General 
Hertzog  while  he  was  a  member  of  tlie 
Botha  Ministry,  and  from  the  proclamation 
issued  by  Maritz  after  lie  had  gone  into 
rebellion,  will  show  that  on  the  most 
important  of  these  issues  the  rebels  merely 
carried  the  Hertzog  doctrine  to  its  logical 
conclusion  : 


WITH    THE    UNION    FORCES. 
Wireless  Outfit  and  the  Operators. 


490 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


General  Hertzog  at  De  WHdl  in  the  Transvaal.  Decern- 
her  7,  1912. 

Imperialism  i=  important  to  inc  only  when  it  is  useful 
to  South  Africa,  to  its  land,  and  to  its  people.  When  it 
is  not  serviceable,  I  have  respect  for  it  from  a  distance, 
but  as  a  South  African  I  have  little  to  do  with  it.  and 
when  it  is  contrary  to  the  interests  of  South  Africa  and 
tli'>  interests  of  the  people  of  the  country,  then  I  am  a 
distinct  enemy  of  Imperialism.  I  am  prepared  to  let  my 
future  as  a  politician  depend  on  that.  That  is  my 
feeling  and  by  that  1  stand.  Imperialism  is  important  to 
me  when  it  is  in  the  interests  of  South  Africa,  and  when 
any  question  of  that  kind  is  to  be  dealt  with,  then  it  will 
always  bo  my  duty  to  ask  myself,  is  the  solution  of  this 
question  in  the  interests  of  South  Africa,  and  if  it  is  to 
t  he  detriment  of  the  country  then  it  is  my  duty  to  have 
nothing  to  do  with  it. 

Maritz.  Extract  Jrom  Proclamation  issued  on  December 
10  1914,  explaining  his  reasons  jor  going  into  armed 
rebellion. 

Because  both  the  English  Government  and  the  jingo 
section  in  England  have  continually  brought  pressure  to 
bear  on  the  Union  (South  African)  Government,  contrary 
to  promises  made,  to  extinguish  and  suppress  the 
national  aspirations  of  our  people  and  to  place  the 
interests  of  the  Empire  above  those  of  South  Africa. 

It  is  worth  noting  that  the  words  quoted 
above  from  Hertzog' s  speech  at  De  Wildt  in 
December,  1912,  finally  convinced  Botha  that 
it  was  impossible  to  allow  Hertzog  to  remain  a 
member  of  his  Ministry.  Two  months  later 
Botha  issued  a  public  statement  in  which  he 
explained  his  reasons  for  expelling  Hertzog 
from  the  Ministry.  In  this  statement  he  showed 
how  mischievous  the  condemnation  in  Imperial- 
ism in  Hertzog's  De  Wildt  speech  might  be  : 

A  public  man  must  not  only  be  held  responsible  for 
what  he  himself  intends  to  convey,  but  especially  for  the 
impression  which  his  words  have  left  reasonably  in  the 
public  mind  ;  and  it  was,  above  all,  General  Hertzog's 
duty,  in  the  high  official  position  which  he  occupied,  to 
consider  and  weigh  his  words  most  carefully  when 
discussing  our  relations  towards  the  British  Empire. 
Instead  of  doing  that,  he  spoke  frivolously,  and  in  a 
manner  which  induced  many  of  the  Dutch  as  well  as  the 
English-speaking  public  to  imagine  that  it  was  a  matter 
of  circumstances  whether  South  Africa  would  remain 
part  of  the  Empire  or  not. 


MOTOR-CYCLIST    SCOUT. 


Botha  reinforced  this  condemnation  of  Hert- 
zog's policy  by  a  reference  to  a  pas.sage  in 
another  speech  made  by  Hertzog,  in  which  he 
declared  that,  "  a-s  a  ^limster,  I  am  a  Minister 
of  South  Africa  and  not  of  the  Empire." 
Botha  pointed  out  that  in  maldng  such  a 
statement  Hertzog  seemed  to  have  "  forgotten 
the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  King  which  every 
IMinister,  when  accepting  office,  must  take." 
Events  were  to  show  how  just  was.  Botha's 
estimate  of  the  effect  that  such  words  were 
likely  to  have  on  some  of  the  Dutch-speaking 
people  of  South  Africa. 

It  is  thus  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  from 
the  moment  when  Hertzog  ceased  to  be  a 
member  of  the  first  South  African  Ministry 
some  at  least  of  his  following  believed  that  in 
the  end  rebellion  would  be  the  only  mean?  of 
making  the  doctrines  that  he  had  preached 
prevail.  Hertzog  liimself  may  not  have  thought 
so,  probably  did  not  think  so.  His  gospel  was 
the  old  gospel  of  IG'uger.  He  may  well  have 
clung  to  the  belief  that  it  would  prove  irre- 
sistibly attractive  to  the  mass  of  the  South 
African  Dutch,  and  that  when  the  next  General 
Election  came — it  had  to  come  not  later  than 
September,  1915 — he  would  return  to  Par- 
liament as  leader  of  a  party  strong  enough  to 
force  Botha  to  submit  to  his  dictation.  His 
formation  of  a  new  party,  his  intrigues  with  the 
Labour  party,  seem  to  show  that  this  was  his 
idea.  Let  him  have  such  credit  for  it  as  may 
be  his  due.  But  he  never  realized — or  if  he 
realized  was  reckless  of  the  consequences — that 
he  had  to  deal  with  the  most  ignorant  and  pre- 
judiced section  of  the  South  African  Dutch. 
They  still  looked  back  with  regret  to  the  days 
of  their  independence.  They  resented  the  in- 
fluence of  the  British  in  South  Africa.  A 
]5eople  bom  to  arms  and  tried  in  war,  they  were 
impatient  of  constitutional  methods.  In  their 
eyes  Hertzog — driven  from  the  Botha  Ministry 
— became  a  martyr  to  the  cause  of  their  race, 
sacrificed  by  Botha  to  placate  the  British. 
Hertzog  might  have  known  that  this  would  be 
the  way  they  wotild  look  upon  his  fall  from 
power.  It  is  almost  incredible  that  he  should 
not  have  known.  Yet,  even  knowing  this,  he 
may  have  flattered  himself  that  they  wotild 
wait  for  the  fruition  of  his  poUtical  organization 
and  intrigues.  He  trusted,  perhaps,  in  their 
loyalty  to  himself,  and  to  ex-President  Steyn, 
whose  mouthpiece  he  was.  If  so,  he  reckoned 
tipon  a  characteristic  of  the  South  African 
Dutch  to  which  we  have  already  assigned  its 


THE    TIMES    HTSTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


491 


due  importance.  But  all  such  calculations 
broke  down  when  other  leaders — men  like  de 
Wet,  and  Beyers,  and  Kemp — abandoned  con- 
stitutional methods  and  set  themselves  to 
organize  armed  rebellion.  Hertzog  should 
have  known  this.  But  the  truth  is  that  he  was 
a  man  who  had  no  real'  gift  for  leadership. 
Hei fumbled  with  the  ambitions  of  passionate 
men' as'though  they  were  books  in  a  library. 
He  was  blinded  by  his  own  self-importance. 
His  slow,  yet  passionate,  mind  saw  only  the 
path  that  he  had  marked  out  for  himself,  and 
followed  it  with  an  intense  preoccupation. 
This  is  the  most  charitable  assiunption  about 
Hertzog's  part  in  the  plot  that  led  up  to  the 
rebelhon.  It  is  quite  possible  that  he  knew 
nothing  of  what  was  going  on.  If  so,  the  less 
credit  to  his  intelhgence.  Nor  does  such  bUnd- 
ness — if  blindness  there  were — lessen  his  respon- 
sibility for  the  tinsel  tragedy  that  was  being 
prepared.  Men  who  aspire  to  lead  their  fellows 
shoulder«a  responsibility  far  too  heavy  to  be 
weighed  by  the  literal  meanings  of  spoken 
words.  And  Hertzog  might  have  known, 
shovild  have  known.  De  Wet,  for  instance, 
warned  him  in  a  speech  made  at  Pretoria  within 
a  month  of  the  definite  breach  between  him  and 
Hertzog.  De  Wet  chose  on  this  occasion  to 
select  a  dung-heap  as  his  platform.  The  whole 
substance^  of  his  speech  was  a  vindication  of 
the  rights  of  Dutch  South  Africans  and  an 
attempt  to  prove  that  they  were  trodden 
vmder  foot  when  Botha  broke  with  Hertzog. 
Hertzog  was  held  up  to  admiration  as  the  only 
man  who  fully  represented  the  South  African 
people.  And  de  Wet  dramatically  declared 
that  he  would  rather  be  on  a  dung-heap 
among  his  people  than  on  the  most  brilliant 
platform  among  foreigners.  The  "  foreigners  " 
were  clearly  the  British  people  of  South  Africa, 
and  Botha  was  represented  as  having  sur- 
rendered to  them.  Language  of  that  kind 
could  only  mean  one  thing.  It  meant  war 
in  South  Africa  against  the  "  foreigners " 
and  their  dupes,  whenever  the  "  patriots " 
should  think  that  their  time  had  come. 

Such  were  the  political  antecedents  of  the 
rebellion.  Knowing  them,  we  should  expect 
to  find  that  the  rebel  leaders,  when  their 
moment  had  come,  would  select  some  occasion 
which  wovild  give  theni  the  opportunity  of 
proclaiming  that  the  interests  of  South  Africa 
were  being  sacrificed  for  those  of  the  British 
Empire,  that  the  Dutch  were  being  down- 
trodden and  oppressed,  that  the  Botha  Ministry 


GROUP    OF    LOYAL    SOUTH    AFRICANS. 

were  the  tools  of  "  foreigners,"  and  that  a 
recoiu-se  to  arms  was  the  only  way  of  ending 
these  evils.  This  was  exactly  what  happened. 
The  Blue  Book  issued  by  the  South  African 
Government  shows  how  the  chief  conspirators 
went  about  their  work.* 

They  were  four — Beyers,  de  Wet,  JNIaritz, 
Kemp.  Besides  these  there  were  a  niunber  of 
minor  leaders — four  members  of  the  South 
African  Parliament,  several  ministers  of  the 
Dutch  Reformed  Church,  and  more  than  one 
member  of  the  Free  State  Provincial  Council. 
Of  these  minor  leaders  none  were  men  of  first- 
rate  importance.  The  type  to  which  they 
belonged  was  illustrated,  though  with  many 
of  its  characteristics  exaggerated,  in  the  per- 
sonality of  Hendrik  Serfontein,  who  was  elected 
to  represent  the  Free  State  constituency  of 
Kroonstad  at  a  by-election.  Tall  and  stooping ; 
with  the  immense  shoulders,  long  arms  and 
enormous  hands  of  an  almost  primitive  son  of 
the  soil  ;  his  face  rugged,  narrow,  bearded  and 
frowned  upon  by  great  overhanging  eyelrows  ; 
violent  in  speech,  yet  often  almost  inarticulate 
for  lack  of  education  to  provide  him  with  tlie 
words  in  which  to  express  himself,  Hendrik 
Serfontein  amazed  his  colleagues  in  the  South 
African  Parliament  by  occasional  exhibitions  of 
the  narrowness  and  concentrated  bitterness  of 
his  mind,  no  less  than  by  the  almost  grotesque 
uncouthness  of  his  personal  habit.  With  such 
leaders  as  this,  it  was  no  wonder  that  many  of 


♦  This  Blue-Book  was  issued  on  Februury  20,  1915. 
The  Preface  states  that  "  a  mass  of  material  in  the  hands 
of  the  Government  could  not  bo  used,  as  it  fonns  inijior- 
tant  evidence  in  the  cases  of  individuals  on  trial  or 
awaiting  trial.  In  the  case  of  certain  German  agents, 
investigations  are  still  being  pursued,  and  it  woultl  be 
premature  to  disclose  the  information  so  far  collootod. 
On  certain  points,  again,  the  available  evidence  had  not 
yet  been  properly  sifted  at  the  time  of  writing." 


492 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


the  Boero  of  the  Free  State  were  led  blindfold 
into  rebellion  by  appeals  to  race  hatred  and 
I>rejudice.  The  Transvaal  rebel-member  of  the 
South  African  Parliament,  Piet  Grobler,  \\'as 
quite  a  different  type.  Young,  a  nephew  of 
Paul  Kruger,  a  lawyer  not  a  fighting  man, 
pleasant  and  mild-mannered,  he  seemed  the 
last  man  to  plunge  into  rebellion.  The  news 
that  he  had  joined  in  the  conspiracy  and  was 
in  arnxs  must  have  seemed  to  those  who  Icnew 
him  as  strange  as  the  news  that  Hendrik  Sor- 
fontein  was  a  rebel  leader  was  natural  and  ex- 


GAPE    PENINSULAR    RIFLES    ON    THE 

MARCH. 

A  morning  bath  after  a  heavy  night  march. 

Inset :  Ready  to  advance. 

pected.  But  these  minor  leaders  need  no  very 
detailed  mention  or  description,  though  doubt- 
less their  influence  in  their  own  districts  was 
considerable.  It  is  quite  otherwise  with  two 
at  least  of  the  four  chief  leaders — Beyers  and  de 
Wet.  Taking  into  consideration  the  character 
of  the  back-veld  Dutch,  it  is  quite  certain  that 
without  two  such  leaders  of  national  reputation 
the  rebellion  would  have  been  a  far  less  serious 
affair  than  it  was.  It  is  more  than  doubtful, 
indeed,  whether  there  would  have  been  any 
rebellion  at  all  if  they  had  not  sanctioned  and 
fomented  it. 

Yet  the  contrast  between  the  characters  of 
Beyers  and  de  AVet  was  very  great,  so  great  that 
even  if  tilings  had  gone  well  with  them,  success 
in  the  field  would  almost  certainly  have  revealed 
fatal  differences  between  them.  Both  were  fight- 
ing generals  who  had  won  enduring  reputations 
during  the  Boer  War.  The  name  of  de  Wot  was, 
of  course,  far  better  known  outside  South  Af  rica, 


THE    COMMANDER-IN-CHIKI-     IN    SOUTH    AIRICA. 
General  Botha  leaving  his  special   "saloon"  on   his  way  to  the  front. 

493 


30-  n 


4U4 


THI'J     TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


THE    TROOP    TRAIN. 
Officers  of  the  Union  Forces  travelling  in  shallow  open  trucks  on  their  way  to  the  Front. 


but  in  their  own  country  and  among  their  own 
people  the  military  cajiacity  of  Beyers  was 
rated  as  high  as.  if  not  higher  than,  that  of  his 
more  famous  colleague.  Beyers  was  young, 
})rave  beyond  the  ordinary  bravery  of  the  Boer, 
endowed  with  the  stark  coiu-age  that  burns  like 
a  flame  among  the  more  clouded  spirits  of 
normal  men.  During  the  last  desperate  days 
of  the  Boer  resistance  to  the  armies  of  Great 
Britain  he  had  done  great  deeds  in  the  Eastern 
Transvaal.  He  and  Louis  Botha,  alone  among 
the  Boer  leaders,  had  shown  some  gi-asp  of 
the  deep  principles  of  strategy  and  had  proved 
their  ability  to  direct  with  success  a  composite 
force  in  the  field.  Beyers' s  handling  of  his 
guns  through  a  long  and  arduous  campaign  had 
given  him,  indeed,  some  title  to  be  regarded  as 
the  most  able  military  leader  that  the  younger 
Boers  had  produced  during  the  Anglo-Boer  War. 
He  had,  too,  the  reputation  of  a  chivalrous  and 
merciful  foe.  In  person  he  was  tall,  straight, 
black-bearded,  with  a  keen  eye  and  all  the 
})earing  of  the  born  soldier.  His  religion  was 
a  deep  and  ardent  passion — narrow  as  such 
icrvent  con\ictions  arc  apt  to  be,  yet  com- 
manding respect  and  admiration  by  its  very 
f'incerity  of  conviction.     Endowed  with  all  these 


qualities,  Beyers  stood  out  among  the  Boers  of 
South  Africa,  till  the  day  of  trial  came  and 
found  him  wanting,  as  a  singular,  romantic  and 
almost  heroic  figure.  As  Speaker  of  the  Trans- 
vaal Parliament  during  the  days  of  responsible 
government  he  had  shown  a  sense  of  justice 
and  fair-play  towards  poUtical  opponents 
which  had  raised  him  high  in  their  estimation. 
When  the  South  African  Parliament  met 
the  Transvaal  Unionists  joined  with  Botha 
in  urging  Beyers's  claims  to  the  Speakership. 
But  Mr.  Merriman,  who  had  been  Prime 
Minister  of  the  Cape  till  the  day  of  Union,  but 
had  been  passed  over  by  the  Governor- General 
in  favour  of  Botha  when  the  time  came  to  call  on 
someone  to  form  the  first  South  African  Ministry, 
had  also  a  candidate  for  the  Speakersiiip. 
The  Cape  was  the  Mother  Colony  of  South 
Africa.  Its  representatives  in  the  South  African 
Parliament  were  inclined  to  think  that  one  of 
its  men  should  have  been  the  first  Prime 
Minister  of  the  Union.  They  backed  Mr. 
Merriman  in  his  demand  that  his  nominee 
should  be  made  Speaker.  Botha  gave  way  and 
Beyers  lost  the  post.  There  is  some  reason  to 
think  that  he  never  forgave  Botha  and  Smuts 
for  this   defection.     They   tried   to  soothe   his 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


495 


THE    COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF    AND    HIS    WIFE. 
General  and  Mrs.  Botha  at  a  Railway  station  In  German  South-West  Africa. 


f(H'lings  by  making  him  Commandant-General 
of  the  Active  Citizen  Force  when  they  passed 
the  Defence  Act  in  the  session  of  1912.  But 
those  who  had  known  Beyers  from  boyhood 
had  always  declared  that  vanity  was  his  weak- 
ness, and  the  vain  man  does  not  easily  forgive 
a  wound  to  his  self-esteem,  nor  can  subsequent 
favours  quite  eradicate  its  smart.  So,  pro- 
bably, it  was  with  Beyers.  If  Botha  had  had 
liis  way  and  Beyers  had  been  made  the  first 
Speaker  of  the  South  African  Parliament,  there 
might  have  been  no  rebellion,  at  least  in  the 
Transvaal,  where  Beyers  was  the  outstanding 
leader. 

Tlie  case  of  de  Wet  was  very  different.  He 
had  none  of  the  superficial  attractions  of  Bej'ers. 
Rugged,  uncultivated,  almost  totally  unlettered, 
he  owed  his  reputation  to  a  natural  gift  of 
handling  men  by  the  most  forceful  methods  of 
the  guerilla  leader.  Several  times  during  the 
Boer  War  the  savage  that  lurked  under  his 
homely  exterior  of  a  Dutch  farmer  revealed 
itself.  He  treated  prisoners  with  brutal  fero- 
city, ill-used  and  bullied  his  own  men,  showed 
no  mercy  when  mercy  could  not  have  injured 
his  cause  and  would  have  done  honour  to  him- 
self      Like  Beyers  in  the  Transvaal,  de  Wet  in 


the  Free  State  came  with  credit  through  the 
days  of  responsible  government.  As  Minister  of 
Agriculture  he  presided  over  a  department 
whose  energy  and  efficiency  was  an  example  to 
the  rest  of  South  Africa.  It  employed  experts 
who  knew  the  country  and  its  needs.  Their 
methods  were  backed  by  de  Wet  with  all  the 
force  of  a  character  as  strong  as  it  was  simple, 
and  with  a  loyalty  that  never  wavered.  When 
Union  came,  he  retired  to  his  farm  and  took  no 
more  part  in  public  life,  refusing  the  preferment 
from  the  State  that  must  have  been  his  If  he 
had  cared  for  it.  There  was  little  more  heard 
of  him  till  the  day  when  he  burst  out  of  his 
retirement,  just  after  Hertzog's  expulsion  from 
the  Botha  Ministry,  to  make  the  violent  speech 
at  Pretoria  which  has  already  been  mentioned. 
The  other  two  chief  leaders,  Kemp  and 
Maritz,  had  no  position  in  ^<  uth  Africa  like 
that  of  Beyers  and  de  Wet.  Kemp  w  is  known 
as  an  efficient  soldier.  He  had  1  een  de  la  Rey's 
chief  lieutenant  during  the  Boer  War  through- 
out the  operations  in  the  \\estern  Tr.vns\aal. 
but  he  was  overshadowed  by  the  merited 
distinction  of  his  loader.  Since  the  war.  he 
had  done  nothing  to  single  himself  out,  though 
when  the  Defence  Force  w  as  organized  in  the 


496 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WJH. 


Transvaal  lie  was  appointed  a  .Major.  He 
appears  to  have  been  in  command  of  a  training 
camp  at  Potchefstroom  in  the  Western  Trans- 
vaal just  before  the  rebellion  began.  Maritz 
liafl  had  a  variegated  career.  He  had  given 
some  proofs  of  a  natural  aptitude  for  leadership 
during  the  Boer  War.  When  peace  was  made, 
lie  tried  his  fortune  first  in  ^Madagascar  and 
afterwards  in  German  South-West  Africa, 
where  he  made  hunself  useful  to  the  Germans 
in  the  Herrero  campaign.  He  then  returned 
to  the  Orange  Free  State,  entered  the  Union 
Police,  and  when  the  Defence  Force  was 
formed  was  given  a  commission  in  it.  going 
through  a  course  of  training  at  the  INIilitary 
College  at  Bloemf ontein  i  n  1 9 1 2.  Early  in  1 9 1 3 
he  was  appointed  to  command  Military  District 
Xo.  12,  which  included  the  north-western 
districts  of  the  Cape  Province.  At  the  begin- 
ning of  August,  1914,  he  became  Lieutenant - 
Colonel  in  command  of  the  South  African 
border  between  the  Union  and  German  South- 
West  Africa,  with  headquarters  at  the  little 
town  of  Upington.  Promotion  was  rapid  in 
South  Africa  in  those  days.  The  Defence  Force 
was  being  organized,  and  old  soldiers  who  had 
shown  capacity  during  the  Boer  War  were 
natui-ally  given  preference  when  selections  for 
the  higher  posts  were  made.  But  the  rise  of 
Maritz  was  meteoric  even  for  South  Africa. 
His  appointment  to  the  command  of  the 
frontier  districts  marching  with  German  terri- 
tory was  due  to  the  "  repeated  and  urgent 
demands  "  of  Beyers,  who  was  Commandant - 
General  of  the  Citizen  Forces. 

Beyers's  anxiety  to  have  Maritz  as  Comman- 
der of  the  Border  must  have  warned  General 
Smuts,  who  was  Minister  of  Defence,  that 
something  -sinister  was  in  the  wind.  Maritz 
was  known  to  have  friends  in  German  South- 
West  Africa.  No  doubt  his  experience  in  that 
country  was  the  ostensible  reason  for  Beyers's 
demand.  Smvits,  we  may  be  sure,  had  his 
doubts,  but  it  was  obviously  difficult  for  him 
to  reject  the  nominee  of  the  Commandant- 
(Iteneral  on  such  a  point.  The  post  to  which 
Maritz  was  thus  appointed  was  very  important. 
War  had  just  broken  out  in  Europe  and  the 
South  African  Government  had  at  once  offered 
to  release  the  garrison  of  Imperial  troops  in  the 
Dominion  for  service  elsewhere.  On  August  7 
the  Imperial  Government  telegraphed  to  the 
South  African  Government  that  if  they  desired 
and  felt  themselves  able  "  to  seize  such  parts 
of  German  South-West  Africa  as  would  give 


tliem  the  command  of  S%vakopmund,  Luderitz- 
bucht,  and  the  wireless  .stations  there  or  in 
the  interior,  we  .should  feel  that  thi.s  was  a 
great  and  urgent  Imperial  service."  On 
August  9  the  Imperial  Government  sent  another 
telegram  to  the  South  African  Government 
saying  that  they  regarded  the  capture  of  the 
wireless  .stations  at  Swakopmund  and  Luderitz- 
bucht  a.s  nece.ssary  and  urgent ;  that  this 
could  "  only  be  effected  in  reasonable  time 
by  a  joint  naval  and  military  exjieclition  up 
the  coast  '"  ;  and  that  the  capture  of  the 
German  long-distance  wireless  .station  at  Wind- 
liuk.  which  was  "'  of  great  unportance,"  might 
follow  another  expedition  against  tlie  coast 
-stations,  or  might  be  carried  out  indepen- 
dently from  the  interior.  On  August  10  General 
Botha  replied  by  telegram  that  he  and  his 
colleagues  had  given  careful  consideration  to 
these  proposals  and  that  they  cordially  agreed 
"  to  cooperate  with  the  Imperial  Government 
and  to  assist  in  sending  an  expedition  for  the 
purpose  indicated,  the  naval  part  to  be  under- 
taken by  the  Imperial  authorities  and  the 
militaiy  operations  to  be  imdertaken  by  the 
Union  (South  African)  Government."  * 

It  was  not  till  September  9  that  General 
Botha  announced  the  intention  of  the  South 
African  Gov  eminent  to  undertake  tliis  expedi- 
tion. It  had  then  to  be  submitted  to  a  special 
session  of  the  South  African  Parliament,  where 
it  was  bitterly  denounced  by  the  Hertzog  party, 
but  approved  by  a  large  majority.  But  General 
Beyers  must  have  been  consulted  by  the 
Government  as  soon  as  the  telegram  of  August  7 
from  the  Imperial  Government  was  received. 
He  was  Commandant-General  and  the  natural 
adviser  of  the  Cabinet  on  a  military  question 
of  this  importance.  JNIaritz  was  appointed  to 
command  the  Border  "  early  in  August."  It 
would  be  interesting  to  know-  whether  Beyers, 
when  he  insisted  on  the  appointment,  knew  of 
his  Government's  intention  to  invade  German 
South-West  Africa. 

Whether  he  did  or  not,  the  evidence  that 
Beyers  and  INIaritz  were  in  collusion  with  the 
Germans  and  seized  on  the  outbreak  of  war 
as  the  long-looked-for  opportunity  of  making  a 
bid  for  independence,  of  breaking  the  power  of 
Botha,  and  of  installing  themselves  as  the  rulers 
of  a  South  African  Republic,  is  very  strong. 

*  These  telegrams  were  published  in  an  Imperial 
White  Paper  [Cd.  7873]  giving  a  Return  of  Correspon- 
dence laid  upon  the  Table  of  the  South  African  House 
of  Assembly  on  March   11,   1915. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


497 


O 

on 

< 


H 

o- 

o 
< 


498 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


Against  Alnritz  it  is  quite  conclusive.  Against 
Beyers  it  is  not,  and  in  his  case  there  is  just  a 
possibility  that  it  was  really  his  objection  to 
the  German  South-West  expedition  that  drove 
him  into  rebellion.  Dead,  he  may  be  given  the 
benefit  of  the  doubt,  but  the  doubt  is  very 
rilender.  However  that  may  be,  nothing  can 
excuse  or  palliate  the  way  in  which  he  went 
about  his  preparations.  As  Commandant- 
General  he  must  have  been  in  the  most  intimate 
confidence  of  the  Government.  He  had  been 
for  years  a  close  political  associate,  a  near 
personal  friend,  of  Botha  and  Smuts.  Con- 
spirators are  doomed  to  have  dirty  hands.  If 
they  succeed  there  are  always  plenty  of 
sycophants  ready  to  lick  them  till  they  look 
clean.  But  the  treachery  of  Beyers  was 
peculiarly  black.  He  held  to  his  confidential 
and  important  post  till  the  last  moment. 
Then,  when  everything  seemed  ready  for  the 
rising,  at  the  very  last  moment  as  he  thought, 
he  launched  his  resignation  at  the  head  of  his 
old  colleagues  in  the  form  of  a  political  manifesto 
published  broadcast  in  the  Press. 

The  first  step,  then,  towards  the  rising  was 
the  appointment  of  Maritz,  at  the  instance  of 
Beyers,  to  the  command  of  the  German  border 
very  soon  after  war  had  broken  out  in  Europe. 
It  would  natvu'ally  be  his  first  task  to  prejaare 


the  invasion  of  German  territory  from  the 
south-east.  Beyers  had  different  plans  for 
him.  The  evidence  all  goes  to  show  that  the 
rising  had  been  concerted  before  war  broke 
out.  On  August  11  Maritz  was  in  Pretoria, 
where  he  saw  Beyers.  It  should  be  remembered 
that  before  he  was  appointed  to  the  general 
command  of  the  border,  Maritz  had  been  since 
the  beginning  of  1913  in  command  of  Military 
District  No.  12,  comprising  the  magisterial 
districts  of  the  Cape  which  adjoin  German 
territory.  Probably  he  had  been  in  treason- 
able communication  with  the  Germans,  and 
came  to  Pretoria  on  August  11,  just  after  his 
appointment  to  the  general  command,  with 
offers  of  German  aid  to  show  to  Beyers  and  the 
other  conspirators.  At  the  moment  when  he 
was  on  his  way  to  Pretoria  one  Joubert — his 
intimate  personal  friend — who  had  been  in 
German  South-West  Africa  during  July,  had 
just  returned  to  South  African  territory.  At 
the  earliest  possible  moment  Maritz,  hurrying 
back  from  Pretoria  to  the  German  border,  sent 
several  telegrams  to  Joubert,  evidently  des- 
l^erately  anxious  to  get  into  touch  with  him. 
They  met  immediately  and  Joubert  was 
appointed  Staff -Captain  by  Maritz.  Joubert 
was  soon  afterwards  sent  to  Pretoria,  where  he 
reported  to  Botha  and  Smuts,  and  also  saw 
Beyers.  Maritz  himself,  hearing  that  there 
had  been  a  collision  between  the  Germans  and 
some  Dutch  South-African  farmers  at  Schuit 
Drift  on  the  Orange  River,  the  southern 
boundary  of  German  South-West  Africa, 
hastened  there,  first  sending  a  telegram  to 
Beyers,  on  August  21,  informing  him  that  he 


BREAK-UP    OF    THE    REVOLT. 
South  African  Mounted  Rifles  behind  barricades.     Inset :  A  rest  in  the  open. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


499 


CHASING    DE    WET. 
The  Motor-car  Contingent  passing  through  Vryburg, 


was  leaving  by  motor  to  prevent  difficulties. 
Reaching  Schiiit  Drift,  one  of  the  few  practicablti 
fords  over  the  Orange  River,  Maritz  crossed 
into  German  territory  and  talked  on  the 
telephone  to  the  Officer  Commanding  the 
German  forces  at  Warmbad.  On  his  return  he 
spoke  publicly  with  great  indignation  about  the 
conduct  of  the  Dutch  farmers  who  had  fired 
on  the  Germans,  and  declared  that  they  ought 
to  be  shot.  Within  a  few  days  German  patrols 
had  crossed  the  river  at  Schuit  Drift  and  were 
searching  for  these  farmers  on  South  African 
territory.  Meanwhile  the  Germans  had  also 
set  foot  on  South  African  soil  at  Nakab,  a 
police  post  on  the  South  African  frontier  about 
eighteen  miles  north  of  the  point  on  the  Orange 
River  where  the  boundary  between  German  and 
South  African  territory  strikes  the  river  from 
the  north.     This  was  on  or  about  August  19. 

Within  a  week  of  the  beginning  of  war  with 
Germany  in  Europe,  therefore,  the  position 
in  South  Africa  was  exceedingly  gi-ave.  The 
Commander  of  the  Union  Forces  on  the  border 
was  in  league  with  the  Germans.  The  Com- 
mandant-General, or  Commander-in-Chief,  of 
the  South  African  Army  was  disaffected, 
if  not  altogether,  at  least  as  far  as  the  question 
of  active  hostilities  against  the  neighboiu-ing 
German  Colony  went.  And  the  South  African 
Govermnent  had  already  committed  itself 
to  such  hostilities.     But  this  was  not  all      In 


various  parts  of  the  Union  there  were  miittor- 
ings  of  discontent  and  disaffection.  In  the 
Western  Transvaal  particularly  the  look  of 
things  was  serious.  Here  there  was  a  "  seor," 
or  prophet,  named  Van  Rensburg,  who  had 
attained  a  position  of  considerable  influence. 
The  tale  of  his  visions  and  prophecies  throws 
an  extraordinary  light  on  the  character  of  tlio 
Dutch  people  of  those  parts.  His  reputation 
rested  on  a  vision  correctly  foretelling  events 
that  preceded  the  Peace  of  Vereeniging  wliicli 
ended  the  Boer  War.  Another  vision  had  shown 
him  the  number  15  on  a  dark  cloud  with  blood 
issuing  from  it  and  General  de  la  Rey  returning 
home  without  his  hat,  followed  by  a  carriage 
covered  with  flowers.  This  vision  was  widely 
known  in  the  Western  Transvaal,  where  de  la 
Rey  was  the  hero  of  the  people.  He  was 
called,  in  fact,  the  "uncrowned  King"  of 
the  Western  Transvaal.  When  war  broke 
out,  it  was  recalled  and  discussed.  Tlie 
plotters  against  the  Government  determined 
to  make  use  of  it.  A  great  meeting  of  burgli»>is 
was  summoned,  to  take  jjlace  at  Treurfontein 
on  August  15,  the  day  of  tlie  first  month  of  war 
that  bore  the  number  seen  by  \'an  Rensburg 
in  his  vision.  Information  came  to  tlie  Govern- 
ment from  many  quarters  that  this  meeting 
was  designed  to  begin  a  rising.  It  was  to  be 
addressed  by  de  la  Rey.  On  August  15  flu> 
meeting  was  held.  About  «0()  burghers  rode 
in  to  attend  it.      De  la  liey  spoke  to  tliem.  but 


500 


THE    TIMES    HISTOHY    OF    THE    WAR. 


OS 

-a 
C 

CO 

OS 


o 
a 

v: 
C 
<a 

u 

H 


Q 

Z 

< 
en 

a 

X 

> 
o 

O 

z 

X 

o 
J 


lie  had  had  an  interview  with  Botha  some  days 
bef'oni.  He  exhorted  Iheni  to  remain  cool 
and  calm,  and  to  await  events.  "  A  strange 
and  unusual  silence"  fell  on  the  burghers  as 
he  finished.  They  pa.ssed  without  dissentient 
voice  a  resolution  expressing  complete  con- 
fidence in  the  Government.  Then  they  dis- 
persed to  their  farms.  The  voice  of  their 
leader  had  spoken.     They  obeyed. 

The  first  concerted  plan  of  rebellion  thus  came 
to  nothing.  Beyers  remained  in  chief  command 
of  the  South  African  forces.  Maritz  was  busy 
on  the  German  border  intriguing  with  the 
enemy.  Meanwliile,  in  Europe,  all  went  in 
fa \- our  of  the  Germans,  whose  armies  were 
pouring  in  an  unending  stream,  with  an  un- 
exampled efficiency  of  equipment  and  transport, 
to  the  overtlirow  of  Belgium  and  the  advance 
on  Paris.  Visions  still  played  before  the  eyes 
of  Van  Rensburg.  He  saw  the  English  leaving 
the  Transvaal  and  moving  down  towards 
Natal.  "  When  they  had  gone  far  away,  a 
\'ulture  fiew  away  from  among  them  and  re- 
turned to  the  Boers  and  settled  down  to  remain 
with  them.  That  was  Botha.  As  for  Smuts, 
he  would  flee  to  England.  There  was  no  hope 
that  he  would  see  South  Africa  again."  *  The 
value  set  by  the  conspirators  upon  these 
hallucinations  of  a  disordered  and  fanatic 
brain  is  shown  by  their  devotion  to  the  number 
15.  August  15  had  proved  useless  for  their 
ends.  They  determined  to  make  their  next 
attempt  on  September  15.  The  date  was 
favourable  for  them.  The  Citizen  Forces  in 
the  Western  Transvaal  would  be  gathered  for 
training  at  Potchefstroom  under  the  command 
of  Kemp.  They  might  be  induced  to  rebel, 
would  vmdoubtedly  rebel,  if  de  la  Rey  could 
be  persuaded  to  lead  them.  And  Botha  and 
Smuts  would  be  in  Cape  Town  at  the  special 
session  of  Parliament  which  was  to  discuss 
the  expedition  against  German  South-West 
Africa. 

Again  their  plans  failed.  This  time  there 
intervened  a  tragedy  so  fortuitous  that  they 
might  well  have  seen  in  it  the  hand  of  Provi- 
dence raised  against  them.  As  the  appointed 
day  drew  near,  the  camp  at  Potchefstroom 
seethed  with  rimaours.  Kemp,  in  command; 
Kock,  the  Lieutenant-Colonel  of  "A"  Squadron, 
had  prepared  everything  for  the  rising.  Kock 
iuluallj'  addressed  his  men  and  told  them  that 
h  •  would  not  obey  Govei'nment  ordei's  to  march 


*   South  Afiitaii  15hie  Hook  |  l".  9,  Xo^.   10-1.51.  p.    10. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


501 


I 


against  German  South-West  Africa.     Kemp  and 
Beyers  both  prepared  their  resignations.    Every- 
thing depended  on  de  la  Rey.     As  a  Senator  of 
the  South  African  Parhament  he  had  gone  to 
Cape  Town  to  attend  the  special  session.     He 
was   to   start   from   Cape   Town    on    his   way 
back  to  the  Transvaal  on  September  14.     There 
are     two     alternative    routes.     That    through 
Kimberley  would  have  brought  him  to  Potchef- 
•stroom  on  the  15th.     He  was  expected  to  take 
it.     He  took,  however,  the  other  route  through 
the    Free    State    and    reached    Johannesburg 
on  the  15th.     That  evening  Kemp  at  Potchef- 
stroom  was  noticed  to  be  in  a  fever  of  anxiety. 
Beyers   at   Pretoria   must   have   been   no   less 
anxious.     On  the  morning  of  the  15th  Joubert 
arrived     at     Pretoria    from    Upington,   where 
Maritz  awaited  the  signal  to  join  hands  with  the 
Germans.     He  brought  a  message  which  told 
Beyers  that  "  all  arrangements  had  been  made 
and    all    was    ready."     Beyers    sent    liim    to 
Johannesburg  in  a  motor-car  to  fetch   de   la 
Eey.     There  was  still  time  to  reach  Potchef- 
stroom   that   night.     Kemp's   resignation   had 
been  received  at  the  Headquarters'  Office.     As 
soon  as  Joubert  had  gone  Beyers  summoned 
his  Staff,  and  announced  his  resignation.     He 
had  already  handed  to  the  Press  the  manifesto 
in  which  he  made  it  public.     The  motor-car 
returned  from  Johannesburg  with  de  la  Rey, 
who   was   evidently   then  persuaded   to   go   to 
Potchefstroom     that     evening     witli     Beyers. 
Their    way    lay    through    Johannesburg.     The 
roads  leading  into  the  to^vn  were  guarded  by 
armed  police   on  the  look-out  for  a  motor-car 
in    which    a   gang    of    criminals    had   escaped. 
Beyers's   car   was   summoned    to    stop.      The 
■chauffeur  took  no  notice  and  drove  on.     The 
patrol  hi'ed  on  the  car.     De  la   Key,  shot  in 
the  back,   died  instantaneously.     At  Potchef- 
stroom   that    night    the    officer    who    shared 
Kock's  tent  woke  to  see  Kemp  leaning  over 
Kock's  bed  and  wliispering  something  in  his 
ear.      "  Kock,  in  a  profoundly  startled  voice, 
exclaimed,  '  Oh,  God  !  '  Kemp  left  immediately, 
and  Kock  then  whispered  to  his  friend,  '  General 
de   la   Rey  is   dood   geskiet '    ('General   de   la 
Rey  has  been  shot  dead.')  "  *     September  15, 
like   August    15,    had   failed   the   conspirators. 
But  the  vision  in  which  the  prophet  Van  Rens- 
burg    had    seen    de    la    Rey   returning    home 
without    his     hat — a    cari'iage    covered     with 
flowei-s     following     liim,     and     overhead     the 

*  South  African  Blue  Book.  p.  18. 


number  15  stamped  upon  a  cloud  that  dripped 
blood-  -had  come  tragically  true. 

With  de  la  Rey  dead,  the  plot  drifted  into  a 
disorganization  that  made  faihire  almost  certain. 
Beyers  and  Kemp  had  burned  their  boats  by 
resigning  from  their  posts  in  the  Defence  Force. 
Kemp  hurried  to  Pretoria  to  try  to  withdraw 
his  resignation,  and  failed.     Beyers  had  other 
things  to  think  about.     There  is  no  doubt  that 
when  his  car  was  summoned  to  stop  outside 
Johannesburg  he  thought  that  he  was  trapped. 
When  he  found  the  whole  affair  an  accident, 
he  still  had  to  explain  a  good  many  awkward 
circmnstances.     The  extremity  reduced  him  to 
a  very  abject  figure.     At  de  la  Ray's  funeral, 
with  a  Bible  in  his  hand,  he  passionately  de- 
clared that  rebelUon  was  far  from  his  thoughts, 
and  called  the  spirit  of  de  la  Rey  to  witness  to 
the  truth  of  tlus  pitiful  lie.     That  was  on  Sep- 
tember 20.     The  next  day  a  meeting  of  about 
800  burghers  was  held  at  Lichtenburg.     Kemp 
presided,  and    Beyers  and  de  Wet  were  both 
present.     The  flag  of   the   Orange  Free   State 
Republic  was  unfurled  by  one  of  the  audience, 
but  Beyers  told  liim  that  "  we  don't  want  any 
of  this  nonsense  here."     De  Wet  also  declared 
that  they  wanted  to  act  constitutionally.     The 
truth  was  that  de  la  Rey's  death  had  deprived 
them  of  the  one  man  who  could  have  raised 
the  whole   of  the  Western  Transvaal   against 
Botha,  and  that,  with  Beyers  no  longer  at  the 
Defence   Headquarters  in   Pretoria,   they   had 
no    means    of    co-ordinating    their    plans    in 
different    parts    of    the    coimtrj%     So    long   as 
Beyers  was  Commandant-General  the  telegraph 
could  be  Tised  at  the  expense  of  the  Govern- 
ment ;    no  one  could  question  the  meaning  of 
messages  that  came  to  or  went  from  him  :   and 
he  could  keep  his  finger  on  the  puLse  of  the 
whole    movement.     Now    all    tliat    was    done 
with.     The  mere  distances  between  Beyers  in 
Pretoria,    Kemp    in    the    Western    Transvaal, 
de  Wet  in  the   Free  State,  and  IMaritz  on  the 
German  frontier,   made  real   combination   im- 
possible.    And    no    doubt    by    this    time    the 
telegraph  was  closely  watched. 

Beyers's  resignation  manifesto  left,  indeed, 
little  doubt  of  what  his  intention  had  been 
when  he  sent  it  broadcast.  It  afTirmod  that "  by 
far  the  great  majority  of  the  Dutch-speaking 
people  of  the  Union ' '  disapproved  of  the 
expedition  against  German  South-West  Africa. 
It  raked  up  bitter  memories  of  the  Boer  W'nr. 
It  insinuated  that  the  Botha  Ministry  had  been 
bought    1)\'    tlie    Impei'ial    (_!o\ernmt«nt    i\t    the 


502 


THE    TIMES    HISTOBY    OF    THE    WAR. 


COMMANDO    OF    LOYAL    BURGHERS. 
Returning  to  Pretoria  after  rounding  up  the  rebels. 


price    of   a   loan   of   £7,000,000.     It   cited   the 
authority  of  Maritz  for  the  statement  that  the 
Germans     had     not     invaded     South     African 
territory.     And  almost  its  last  words  were  the 
question,  "Who  can  foretell  where  the  fire  the 
CJovernment  has  decided  to  light  shall  end  ?  " 
If  Beyers  had  not  intended  to  rebel  the  same 
night  as  his  manifesto  was  published  he  would 
hardly  have  asked  that  question.     The  reply 
of  General  Smuts  is  well  known.     Its  tone  was 
one  of  supreme  contempt  for  a,  irxan  who  could 
have    descended    to    such    ignoble    depths    of 
treachery  as  Beyers  had  reached.     It  reminded 
Beyers  that  only  the  freedom  granted  by  Great 
Britain  to  South  Africa  enabled  him  "  to  write 
with  impunity  a  letter  for  which  you  wovild. 
without  doubt,  be  liable  in  the  German  Empire 
to  the  extreme  penalty."     To  Beyers's  phrases 
about  duty  and  honour  it  supphed  the  crushing 
retort  that   ''  the  people  of  South  Africa  will 
.   .   .  have   a   clearer   conception   of   duty   and 
honour  than  is  to  be  deduced  from  your  letter 
and  action.     For  the  Dutch-speaking  people  in 
particular   I    cannot    conceive   anything   more 
fatal  and  humiliating  than  a  policy  of  lip  loyalty 
in  fair  weather  and  a  policy  of  neutrality  and 
pro-German  sentiment  in  days   of  storm   and 
stress," 

Meanwhile,  on  the  German  frontier,  events 
were  hurrying  Maritz  into  open  rebellion. 
Within  a  few  days  of  Beyers's  resignation  a 


telegram  was  sent  from  Headquarters,  where 
Smuts  had  now  taken  the  reins,  to  Maritz  at 
L'pington,  asking  him  to  send  a  small  force  to 
Schuit  Drift,  and  himself  to  move  towards  the 
German   border    in    cooperation   with   Colonel 
Lakin,    who,   in   command   of   a   column,   had 
orders  to  invade  German  territory,  and  to  try 
to  captiu-e  Warmbad.     ]\Iaritz's  reply  showed 
how  little  he  could  be  trusted.     He  advised  the 
Government   to   abandon   the  expedition,    de- 
clared that  his  force  was  quite  unfit  to  take 
the    offensive   against   the    Germans,    and   ex- 
pressed   his    willingness    to    "do    my    best    to 
support  you  on  this  side  of  the  frontier.'^     Maritz 
ended  his  telegram,  sent  on  September  25.  by 
saying    that    "  if    there    are    further    plans    to 
attack  German  South-West  Africa  mider  the.'^e 
conditions,  I  shall  be  glad  if  my  resignation  is 
accepted."     An  emissary  from  Smuts  went,  on 
the   instant   to   Upington.     He   reached   it   on 
September  27,  and  found  a  most  serious  state 
of  affairs.     Maritz  was  in  constant  communi- 
cation with  the  Germans.     The  force  under  his 
command,  about  1,600  men,  had  been  corruj:)ted 
and    was    not    to    be    trusted.     Smuts    hastily 
moved  all  the  troops  he  could  lay  liis  hands  on 
towards  L^pington,  and,  as  soon  as  they  were 
gathered,  placed  them  under  the  command  of 
Colonel  Brits,  who  was  instructed  to  move  on 
Upington,    and   if   possible,    to   arrest   Maritz. 
In  the  meantime  Maritz  had   twice  been  in- 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


503 


structed    by    telegram    to    report    hiniseif    at 
Pretoria,  and  had  twice  refused. 

Brits    arrived    at   Upington    on    October    7. 
He  did  not  find  Maritz  there.     On  October  2 
Maritz  had  moved  towards  the  German  border, 
concentrating  all  the  forces  imder  his  command 
at    Van    Rooisvlei,    about    25    miles    west    of 
Upington.     On  October  6,  taking  Joubert  with 
him,  he  crossed  the  border  and  had  a  consulta- 
tion   with    the    Germans.     On    October    9    he 
assembled  and  made  a  speech  to  his  command. 
Sixty     loyal     officers     and     men    were     taken 
prisoners   and   handed   over   to   the   Germans. 
The  rest  agreed  to  rebel,  and  elected  hixn  as 
their  leader.     Major  Bouwer,  sent  by  Colonel 
Brits    to    summon    Maritz    to    surrender    his 
command,    was    put    tmder    arrest.     He    was 
released,   however,  and  sent  back  to  Colonel 
Brits    with    an    ultimatum    in    which    Maritz 
declared  that  imless  he  was  allowed  to  meet 
Hertzog,  Beyers,  and  de  Wet,  and  was  other- 
wise advised  by  them,  he  was  determined  to 
fight    to   the   bitter   end.     In   this   ultimatum 
]\Iaritz  also  boasted  that  he  would  overrun  the 
whole  of  South  Africa,  and  that  the  Germans 
had  supplied  him  with  100  guns  and  unlimited 
quantities    of    small    arms,    ammunition,  and 
money.      Major    Bouwer,     when    he    reached 
Colonel  Brits,  reported  that  he  had  foimd  the 
Dutch   rejjublican    flag    flying    over    Maritz's 
camp,  and  that  Maritz  had   shown  him  num- 
bers of  telegrams  and  heliograph  messages  from 
the   Germans   which  showed   that   Maritz  had 
been   in   frequent    communication   with    them 
at    least    since    September     10.       These    facts 
were  communicated    to    the   public    of    South 
Africa  in   a  statement  issued  by  the  Govern- 
ment   on    October     12.       On    the    same     day 
martial   law   was    proclaimed    throughout    the 
Union. 

The  measures  taken  by  the  Government  to 
deal  with  this  outbreak  were  both  prompt  and 
effective.     The  situation  was  difficult.    Maritz's 
force    had    been   intended   to   cooperate   with 
other  South  African  columns  in  the  invasion 
of  German  territory  from  the  south-east.     Its 
defection     disorganized     the     whole     plan     of 
campaign.       More,    unless    the    counter-stroke 
was  rapid  and  effective,  it  left  the  north-western 
districts  of  the  Cape  Province  open  to  invasion 
by  a  combined  force  of  rebels  and   Germans. 
The    test    brought    out    the    great    ability   of 
Smuts  as  an  organizer  of  victory  in  the  field. 
The    force    rapidly    concentrated    and    placed 
under  the  command  of  Colonel  Brits  attacked 


Maritz  within  ten  days  of  his  open  rebellion. 
As  early  as  October  15  Colonel  Brits  was  able 
to  report  that  he  had  engaged  Maritz's  com- 
mando at  Ratedraai,  ten  miles  south  of  Uping- 
ton on  the  road  to  Kenhardt.     After  a  brief 
fight   the   rebels    were   driven   off,   leaving    70 
prisoners  in  the  hands  of  the  Loyalist  forces. 
This  first  success  was  followed  up  with  great 
energy.     Within  a  few  days  Maritz  found  that 
v\  hen  he  relied  on  German  help  he  leant  on  a 
roed   that   broke   and   pierced   his    hand.     On 
October  26  Colonel  Brits  met  him  at  Kakamas, 
■n  hich  had  been  evacuated  by  its  small  garrison 
as    Maritz    approached.      There    the    decisive 
engagement    took    place.     Maritz     was     com- 
pletely defeated  ;   his  force  broken  into  fugitive 
bands  that  scattered  in  all  directions  through 
the      barren      and     waterless     veld ;      himself 
wounded   and  forced   to   take   flight   over  the 
German    border.     Three    days    later    Colonel 
Brits   could   report    that   he    had    defeated    a 
remnant    of   the    rebels    at    Schuit    Drift,  and 
that    the    rebellion    in    the    north-west    of    the 
Cape  Province  was  completelj'^  broken,  so  much 
so    that    he    handed    over    the    command    of 
the  Loyalist  troops  in  that  region  to    Colonel 
Royston.    and    returned     to     the     Transvaal, 
where     more     important    work    in    the    field 
awaited  him. 

For  in  the   20  days  that  it  had  taken   the 
Government    to    smash    Maritz.    a    far    more 
serious  outbreak  had  taken  place  at  the  very 
heart  of  the  Union.     General  Botha's  reply  to 
the  resignation  of  Beyers  was  to  announce  that 
he  himself  would  take  command  of  the  South 
African    forces,    and    would    personally    direct 
operations  in  the  field  against  the  neighbouring 
German  colony.     This  bold  and  decisive  step, 
characteristic  of  the  man  who  took  it,  must  be 
ranked  in  its  effects  among  the  most  important 
events  in  the  laistory  of  South  Africa  after  tiie 
Peace  of  Vereeniging.     Botha,  when  he  decided 
to  lead  the  King's  forces  in  the  field,  must  have 
foreseen,  if  he  did  not  Icnow  for  certain,  that 
the  first  enemy  whom  he  would  have  to  meet 
would  he,  not  the  Germans,   but   Beyers  and 
de   Wet  and  Kemp — men    who  had  been  his 
fellow-generals  in  arms  against  Great  Britain 
only    12    years    before.     With    what    anxiety, 
with    what    heart-searchings,    must    he    have 
weighed  and  balanced  a  crisis  that  demanded 
of  iiini  so  supreme  a  personal  sacrifice.      From 
the  standpoint  of  his  own  advantage  it   must 
have  seemed  tt)  him  tliat  he  had  ('V(>r\thiiig  to 


501 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


lose — nothing  to  gain.  His  reputation  as  a 
military  commander  of  far  more  than  local 
distinction  had  been  won  for  all  time  in  the 
Boer  War.  It  was  secure  so  long  as  he  did  not 
put  it  to  the  test  again.  And  Beyers,  de  Wet, 
and  Kemp  were  the  tliree  men  yet  living  who, 
after  himself,  had  proved  themselves  in  the 
Boer  War  the  best  leaders  of  fighting  men 
among  his  people.  He  might  well  have 
shrunk  from  such  a  te3t.  The  years  that  had 
passed  over  his  head  since  peace  had  been  made 
at  Vereeniging  in  May,  1902,  had  been  exacting 
years.  They  had  notorious!  \'^  taken  a  heavy 
toll  of  his  strength  and  health.  The  work  of 
Prinae  Minister  of  South  Africa,  head  of  a  Dutch 
Government  under  the  British  Crown  at  a 
mpment  when  many  of  the  Dutch  throughout 
South  Africa  were  on  the  brink  of  rebelUon, 
was  heavy  enough  for  any  ordinary  man.  No 
one  could  have  thought  of  blaming  him  if  he 
had  been  content  with  tliat  burden.  He  was 
not  content.  It  took  him  exactly  seven  days 
to  make  up  his  mind.  Beyers  had  resigned 
on  September  15.  On  September  22  it  was 
annomiced  that  General  Botha  would  take 
personal  conimand  of  the  South  African  forces. 
It  will  never  be  easy  for  the  people  of  Great 
Britain  to  recognize  the  full  extent  of  the 
obligation  laid  upon  the  Empire   by  General 


Botha  when  he  made  that  decision.     Such  an 
obligation  can  never  be  discharged.     But  it  is  • 
the  welcome  task  of  the  historian  to  set  it  at 
its  true  value. 

Coming  two  days  after  the  funeral  of  de  la 
Rey,  this  announcement  of  General  Botha's 
determination  to  take  the  field  must  have  made 
the  rebel  leaders  in  the  Transvaal  and  the 
Free  State  realize  that  their  task  would  be 
formidable.  The  prestige  of  Botha  rallied 
many  waverers  an^ong  the  Dutch  and  brought 
the  whole  British  population  of  the  Union 
to  a  fervour  of  enthusiastic  support  of  the 
Government.  The  rebel  leaders  redoubled 
their  intrigues.  They  shamelessly  spread  a 
riunour  that  de  la  Rey  had  been  shot,  net 
accidentally  from  behind,  but  in  front — the 
victim  of  deUberate  assassination  committed 
on  Govermnent  orders.  Still  proclaiming  their 
loyalty,  they  busily  organized  in  the  Transvaal 
and  the  Free  State  meetings  of  protest  again.st 
the  German  expedition.  Botha,  well  aware  of 
their  real  designs,  replied  by  a  speech  to  a  great 
meeting  at  Bank,  in  the  Transvaal,  on  Septem- 
ber 29,  when  he  emphasized  the  fact  that  only 
volunteer  troops  would  be  used  in  the  expedi- 
tion, and  that  no  one  would  be  forced  to  go. 
Nevertheless,  the  campaign  of  slander  and 
thinly- veiled  sedition  grew  throughout  the  Free 


INSPECTION    OF    TROOPS    AT    THE    CAPE. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF     THE    WAR. 


505 


GENERAL    DE   WET'S    BROTHER   GIVES    INFORMATION    TO    COLONEL    COEN    BRITS. 
General  de  Wet's  brother,   Piet,  seen  on  the  right,  is  a  Loyalist.     The  white  armlet  distinguishing 

a  Loyalist   soldier  may  be  seen  on   the  Colonel. 


State  and  the  Western  Transvaal.  The  news  of 
the  rebellion  of  Maritz  on  October  9  reached 
Kemp  and  Beyers  on  October  12.  Already  it 
was  freely  rumoured  in  many  districts  that 
rebellion  would  break  out  immediately.  The 
leaders  hardly  held  their  followers  in.  A 
meeting  of  the  chief  conspirators  took  place 
at  Kopjes,  in  the  Free  State,  on  October  Hi. 
It  was  adjourned.  The  next  day  Beyers  and 
de  Wet  met  in  Pretoria  and  concerted  their 
final  plans.  When  the  news  of  Maritz's  rising 
reached  the  Government,  all  the  District 
Commandants  were  ordered  to  collect  their  men 
for  the  defence  of  the  Union.  The  district  of 
Lichtenbiu-p  was  responsible  for  300  men.     It 


had  throughout  been  a  centre  of  sedition.  Here 
de  la  Rey  had  been  buried,  and  here  the 
Republican  flag  had  been  displayed  at  the 
meeting  that  was  held  the  day  after  the  funeral. 
Of  these  300  men,  150  suddenly  refused  to  obey 
orders  on  October  19.  They  rode  of^,  taking 
with  them  the  horses  and  rifles  and  other 
(^overnnvent  property  with  wliich  they  had 
been  equipped.  On  the  same  day  Beyers  left 
Pretoria  and  disapjjeared.  He  had  made  no 
reply  to  urgent  requests  from  the  Government 
that  he  should  go  to  Maritz  and  persuade  him 
to  siu-render  without  more  bloodshed.  Three 
days  later  the  Govcriuuent  knew  thai  lieycrs 
was   at    Danihoek,    in    the    Transvnal,    with    a 


506 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE 


AH. 


WHERE    DE    WET'S  FORGES    WERE    SCATTERED. 

General  Botha  (on  left)  and  staff  at  Mushroom  Valley,  where  the  rebel  forces  were 

completely  defeated  and  routed. 


rebel  commando.  From  there  he  sent  a  mes- 
sage to  the  other  leaders,  M'ho  met  again  at 
Kopjes  on  October  22.  "  Here,"  he  told 
them  "everything  is  ready,  and  the  burghers 
practically  under  arrns."  The  meeting  re- 
solved  that : 

Whereas  the  Dutch  Sovilh  African  people  in  the  Orange 
Free  State  and  the  Transvaal  are  oppressed,  the  meetinp 
resolves  to  confide  all  further  measures  to  General  Beyers 
in  the  Transvaal  and  to  General  de  M'et  in  the  Orange 
Free  State. 

Kemp  was  at  that  meeting,  and  de  Wet  and 
other  subordinate  leaders  from  both  the 
Transvaal  and  the  Free  State.  The  next  day 
the  rebellion  broke  out  in  the  Free  State  ;  the 
daj-  after  in  the  Transvaal.  On  the  evening  of 
October  23  a  rebel  force  occupied  Heilbron, 
in  the  Free  State.  On  October  24  Reitz 
^^a.s  threatened,  and  a  train  stopped  which 
contained  volunteer  recruits  for  the  South 
African  forces.  They  were  deprived  of  their 
rifles  and  ammunition.  That  same  day  other 
trains  were  stopped  at  Treurfontein,  in  the 
Transvaal,  and  men  and  war  material  were 
commandeered  "  bj-  order  of  Commandant - 
General    C.    Beyers." 

The  energies  of  the  Government  were  now 
directed  towards  two  ends.  They  had  first  to 
ensure  sufficient  forces  to  dispose  of  Beyers  and 
de  Wet  in  the  field.  But  they  had  also  to  use 
every  endeavour  to  avoid  bloodshed  if  that 
was  possible.  They  were  not  lacking  to  either 
need.  General  Botha  had  already  appealed 
to  ex-President  Steyn  and  to  Hertzog  to  make 
public   declarations   condemning   the   rebellion 


of  Maritz,  From  Hertzog  this  had  met  with 
no  response.  Nor  had  Steyn  thought  fit  to 
declare  himself  publicly.  When  Botha  heard 
of  Maritz's  treason  on  October  11  he  at  once 
sent  a  telegram  to  Steyn  inforining  him  of  the 
facts,  telling  him  that  the  Government  intended 
to  proclaim  martial  law,  and  concluding,  "  You, 
of  course,  know  the  seriousness  of  the  affair. 
A  word  from  you  will  go  far."  Steyn  replied 
by  letter  (October  12),  saying  that  his  health 
was  bad,  his  position  difficult,  his  personal 
disapproval  of  the  expedition  against  German 
South-West  Africa  strong.  In  these  circum- 
stances he  fovmd  himself  unable  to  inake  any 
public  pronouncement  without  including  in  it 
a  statement  as  to  his  disagreement  with  the 
Government  on  the  question  of  the  expedition. 
He  also  used  a  phrase  implying  that  the 
rebellion  of  Maritz  was  caused  by  the  policy 
of  the  Government  in  imdertaking  the  expedi- 
tion. Botha's  reply  (October  13)  disposed 
effectively  of  this  implication.  "  There  is  no 
connexion/'  he  wrote,  "  between  the  decision 
of  Parlianient  (approving  of  the  expedition) 
and  this  act  of  treason.  I  possess  the  proofs 
that  long  before  tlie  resolve  of  the  Government 
became  known,  in  fact  long  before  that  resolve 
was  come  to,  a  plot  was  already  on  foot,  a  plot 
with  wliich  IVIaritz  and  others  with  him  were 
closely  associated.  .  .  .  The  cause  of  this  treason 
is  nothing  but  the  outbreak  of  the  war  with 
Germany  and  the  deplorable  and  fatal  idea  of 
the  present  traitors  that  now  that  the  British 
Empire  finds  itself    in  difficulties  the  time  has 


THE    TIMES    HISTOEY    OF    THE    WAR. 


oOl 


come  to  recover  our  freedom  by  making 
common  cause  with  the  Germans  across  our 
border.  It  is  an  abominable  thing  that  Maritz 
hti-s  done." 

Botha  made  in  the  same  ktlcr.  in  words 
full  of  deep  feeling,  another  appeal  to  Steyn 
to  say  tlie  v/ord  that  might  save  numbers 
of  the  Dutch  from  being  led  away  into 
rebellion  : 

The  misery  .and  the  sorrow  that  may  come  upon  our 
people  in  consequence  of  this  action  are  so  awtul  that 
in'  my  opinion  it  is  the  sacred  duty  of  every  man  of 
influence  in  our  country  to  do  everything  in  his  power 
to  keep  those  consequences  within  as  narrow  limits  as 
possible.  There  is  no  one,  Pre^^ident,  wlio  could  speak 
ii  word  with  greater  effect  than  you.  ...  I  would 
address  an  earnest  appeal  to  you  who  stand  above 
jvolitical  parties  and  interests — speak  a  word  to  warn 
(uir  peop'e  against  treason,  against  the  everlasting 
stain  that  anything  of  the  kind  would  be  upon  our 
national  honour,  and  against  the  incalculably  latal 
consequences. 

Stej-n  made  no  response,  and  the  word  for 
which  Botha  asked  remained  unspoken.  But 
on  October  22  Botha  wrote  again,  telling  Ste3-n 
that  the  Government  had  unquestionable 
information  that  de  Wet,  Bejers,  and  Kemp 
were  on  the  brink  of  rebellion : 

I  consider  it  imperative  that  you  should  without 
delay,  through  your  son  Colin  and  other  reliable  men. 
dispatch  a  letter  to  de  Wet,  Beyers,  and  Kemp,  and 
either  summon  them  to  meet  you  or  in  some  other  way 
turn  them  from  the  path  of  destruction  where  they  now 
stand.  If  they  come  to  you  the  (lovernment  will  take 
no  steps  to  arrest  them,  and  will  provide  every  facility 
for  your  messengers. 

Do  your  best.  President,  to  sa\o  our  people  from  this 
reproach,  this  indelible  dishonoiu'.  'J'he  position  is  more 
serious  than  words  can  describe. 

What  you  do  must  be  done  at  once  :  an  outbreak  may 
now  be  expected  any  dav. 


Then,  at  last,  Steyn  was  moved  to  action, 
though  his  reply  to  Botha  still  kept  the  un- 
gracious tone  of  a  sick  man  disturbed  in  liis 
brooding  over  bodily  ailments.  It  questioned, 
also,  the  accuracy  of  the  Government's 
information  about  de  Wet's  treasonable 
intentions.  But  it  announced  Steyn's  inten- 
tion to  summon  Beyers,  Kemp,  and  de  Wet 
to  come  to  Onze  Rust  (Steyn's  farm  near 
Bloemfontein). 

Colin  Steyn  was  accordinglj-  dispatched  with 
the  letter.  He  went  on  October  24  to  Dam- 
hoek;  where  Beyers  lay  at  the  head  of  a  rebel 
commando.  He  returned  to  Pretoria  that 
night,  and  reported  that  Beyers  would  not  go 
to  see  Steyn  until  he  knew  that  de  Wet  was 
going  too.  A  telegrana  had  been  sent  during 
the  day  to  de  Wet,  telhng  him  that  Colin 
Steyn  had  a  letter  for  him  from  Steyn,  and 
asking  iiim  to  leave  word  with  a  mutual 
acquaintance  at  Vrede  where  he  could  be 
found.  No  reply  had  come  from  de  We't. 
Colin  Steyn  waited  in  Pretoria  till  October  20, 
and  then  went  back  to  Bloemfontein  to  consult 
with  his  father.  On  October  28  he  went  with 
Hertzog  to  Heilbron,  hoping  to  meet  de  Wet, 
but  did  not  find  him  there.     During  the  next 


SEARCHING    FOR    THH    HNHMY. 
General  Botha  and  his  stafif. 


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THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    TEE    WALL 


509 


three  days  Hertzog  succeeded  in  meeting  de 
Wet  twice,  on  the  second  occasion  in  company 
with  Colin  Steyn,  but  failed  to  persuade  him 
to  go  to  Steyn.  He  reported,  however,  that  the 
position  was  hopeful,  and  the  commanders  of 
the  Government  forces  were  ordered  to  take 
no  hostile  steps  against  de  Wet,  while  a  safe 
conduct  was  sent  him  to  enable  him  to  go  to 
Steyn  at  Onze  Rust.  This  was  on  the  last  day 
of  October. 

In  the  meantime  there  had  been  a  colUsion 
between  the  Government  forces  under  Botha 
and  Beyers's  Commando  in  the  Transvaal,  at 
a  place  called  Commissie  Drift,  near  Rusten- 
burg.     There  is  ample  evidence  to  show  that 
the  Government  had  done  its  utmost  to  avoid 
active  hostilities.      On  October  23   the  Com- 
missioner of  Police  was  informed  that  General 
Smuts,    the    Minister    of   Defence,    was    most 
anxious  to  avoid,  bloodshed.     On  October  26 
a  public  statement  was  issued  that  burghers, 
who  had    refused  to  obey  the  Government's 
summons  to  active  service,  need  not  fear  any 
action  agamst  them  so  long  as  they  remained 
quietly  at  home  and    abstained  from  acts  of 
violence  or  hostility  against  the  authority  of 
the    Government.     Throughout   the   rebellion, 
indeed,  the  Government  went  to  the  furthest 
limits   of   moderation  and  self-restraint.     The 
troops  were  ordered,  for   instance,  not  to  fire 
upon  rebel  commandoes  unless  they  fired  first, 
an  order  which  led  directly  to  some  loss  of  life 
among  the  Government    men,  and  caused    a 
good  deal  of  murmuring  by  the  loyalist  popula- 
tion.    Thus  Colonel  Alberts,  a  Dutch   member 
of  the  South  African  Parliament,  who  had  taken 
command  of  one  of  the  columns  which    were 
being  concentrated  against  the  rebels,  reported 
from  Treurfontein  on  October  31    that    there 
was  a  very  strong  feeling  among  the    officers 
under  his  command  against  the  policy  of  allow- 
ing rebels  who  were  openly  organizing  to  return 
freely  to  their    homes  on  simply  surrendermg 
their  arms  and  ammunition.      General  Smuts 
replied  (October  31) : 

It  is  in  the  interests  of  the  Government  to  put  an  end 
to  the  rising  in  the  Western  Transvaal  as  speedily  as 
possible.  Therefore  we  promise  pardon  to  those  who 
surrender  immediately.  If  not,  they  will  be  punished 
as  rebels. 

These  steps  were  taken  after  the  collision  at 
Commissie  Drift.  The  earlier  efforts  made  by 
the  Government  to  end  the  rebellion  without 
bloodshed  evidently  encouraged  the  rebel 
leaders  in  the  Transvaal  to  believe  that  the 
Government  would  do  nothing  decisive  by  \\ay 


of  armed  force.  Beyers  and  his  colleagues  were 
commandeering  men  on  the  pretended  authority 
of  the  Government,  were  spreading  reports  that 
Botha  and  Smuts  were  really  on  their  side,  and 
would  give  way  as  soon  as  force  was  used,  and 
were  looting  stores  and  breaking  up  railway 
and  telegraph  lines.  So  it  became  necessary 
to  show  that  the  Government  w-as  in  earnest. 
On  October  27,  three  days  only  after  Beyers's 
men  had  committed  the  first  hostile  acts  in 
the  Transvaal,  General  Botha  took  the  field 
against  him,  fell  on  his  commando  at  Com- 
missie Drift,  and  scattered  it  to  the  whids. 
Beyers  himseK  escaped.  For  some  days  no 
one  knew  where  he  had  gone. 

In  the  Free  State,  while  Steyn's  emissaries 
were  doing  their  best  to  induce  de  Wet  to  go 
to  Onze  Rust,  and  there  listen  to  Steyn's 
advice,  de  Wet  himself  was  giving  full  rein  to 
his  passionate  resentment  against  the  Goveni- 
ment.  On  October  29  he  cr.me  with  a  band 
of  about  120  armed  men  to  Vrede,  a  town  of 
the  Free  State.  There,  while  his  men  looted 
and  pillaged,  he  delivered  a  violent  speech  in 
which  he  denounced  "  the  miserable,  pesti- 
lential English,"  the  "  ungodly  policy  of  General 
Botha,"  and  the  German  South-West  Expedi- 
tion— "  a  dastardly  act  of  robbery."  This 
was  also  the  speech  in  which  de  Wet  com- 
plained that  he  had  been  fined  5s.  by  a  magistrate 
for  flogging  a  native,  and  gave  Smuts  the 
opportunity  of  a  biting  retort  on  the  subject  of 
"  the  5s.  rebellion."  The  tenour  of  the  whole 
utterance  was  a  complaint  that  the  Dutch 
were  being  ojopressed  by  the  E.:glish,  that 
their  language  was  boycotted,  that  their 
customs  were  trampled  under  foot,  and  tliat 
they  did  not  receive  their  fair  share  of  Govern- 
ment posts.  ]\Iany  have  wondered  that  de 
Wet  could  make  such  a  speech  as  a  j  ustificat  ioi  i 
for  his  rebellion.  They  need  not  have  been 
surprised.  He  spoke  the  ordmary  jargon  ol 
Hertzogism,  though  with  more  violence  and 
less  subtlety  than  its  exponents  ordinarily' 
affected.  But  then  de  Wet  was  no  politician, 
and  troubled  himself  little  about  those  nicntal 
reservations  and  verbal  quibbles  which  enabled 
Hertzog  and  his  followers  to  take  their  seats, 
quite  unabashed,  in  the  South  African  Parlia- 
ment after  the  rebellion  was  over,  and  to  lay 
their  hands  upon  their  hearts  and  protest  that 
rebellion  had  always  been  far  from  their 
thoughts. 

To  such  heights  of  sophistry  de  Wet  never 
aspired.     He  was  one  of  the  dui)es,  ami  when 


510 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


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the  time  came  to  put  the  doctrines  of  Hertzog 
to  the  practical  test,  he  flung  himself  into 
rebelUon  with  rugged  enthusiasm.  But  he 
had,  nevertheless,  a  kind  of  cunning  of  his  own, 
and  as  the  Government  still  held  its  hand,  and 
the  attempts  of  Stej-n  to  get  him  to  go  to  Onze 
Rust  continued,  with  the  countenance  of  Smuts 
and  Botha,  he  made  the  best  use  of  them  to 
gain  time.  More  than  once  he  assured  Colin 
Steyn  that  he  would  go  to  see  ex-President 
Steyn.  His  officers  all  urged  him  to  do  so. 
But  all  the  time,  as  his  captured  letter-books 
show,  he  was  sending  orders  to  the  commandants 
of  his  detached  columns  directing  the  attacks 
on  towns,  telegraphs,  and  railways  which  they 
were  making.  Thus  on  November  4  the  rebels 
blew  up  a  railway  bridge  south  of  Kroonstad  ; 
on  November  5  they  blew  up  the  Kroonst  ad- 
Natal  line  in  two  jalaces  ;  and  on  the  same  day 
a  commando,  under  Conroy,  blew  up  the  rail- 
way bridge  at  Virginia.  On  November  6  a 
loyaUst  patrol  was  attacked  by  rebels  south  of 
I^joonstad.  And  on  November  8  a  sharp 
engagement  took  place  between  some  of  de 
Wet's  men  and  a  small  commando  iinder 
Comimandant  Cronje.  In  this  action  the 
loyalists  suffered  a  reverse,  which  cost  them 
several  men.  It  con\'inced  the  Government  at 
last  that  de  Wet  wovild  have  to  be  dealt  with 
by  means  of  armed  force,  and  closed  the  last 
avenue  to  a  bloodless  settlement  througli  the 
mediation  of  StejTi. 

In  the  Transvaal  the  rebellion  had  already 
been  brought  to  the  issue  of  arms.  After  liis 
reverse  at  Commissie  Drift  on  October  27, 
Beyers  was  believed  by  Smuts  to  have  retired 
to  the  fastnesses  of  the  hill  country  north  of 
Rustenburg.  It  was  the  only  case  during  all 
these  days  of  doubt  and  haste  in  A\hicli  the 
intuition  of  Srauts  proved  to  be  at  favdt. 
Beyers's  next  appearance  was  at  Katbosfontein, 
north-west  of  Wolmaranstad.  There  he  had 
again  collected  a  commando,  and  there  a  long 
interview  took  place  between  him  and  a  ]Mr. 
Cecil  jNIeintjes,  who  acted  on  behalf  of  the 
Government,  on  November  4.  From  this  inter- 
view ^Ir.  ^leintjes  retvumed  charged  by  Beyers 
with  a  message  defining  the  terms  on  which 
the  rebels  would  lay  down  their  arms.  In  this 
document  Beyers  offered  to  disband  his  force 
if  the  Government  w  ould  use  only  volunteers 
against  German  South-West  Africa,  and  ^^  ould 
guarantee  rebel  officers  and  leaders  against 
prosecution.  Smuts' s  reply  gave  this  guarantee 
and    pointed    out    that    the    Govermnent    had 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


511 


CAUGHT    AT    LAST. 
General    Christian    de  Wet  (in  centre)  directly  after  his  capture.     He  surrendered  on  December  1,   1914, 

at  Waterburg,  110  miles  west  of  Mafeking. 


repeatedly  pledged  itself  not  to  press  men  for 
service  against  German  South-West  Africa. 
But  Beyers's  request  for  terms  was  not  sincere. 
By  noon  on  November  5,  before  he  could 
possibly  have  had  any  reply  from  the  Govern- 
ment, he  had  marched  25  miles  south,  and 
was  close  to  the  railway  line  at  I^ingswood. 
Here  the  railway  was  guarded  by  Government 
troops.  Beyers  attacked  them  and  broke 
tlirough.  His  object  was  evidently  to  cross 
the  Vaal  into  the  Free  State,  and  there  join  de 
Wet.  But  the  Government  troops  were  rapidly 
closing  romid  him.  On  November  7  they 
attacked  his  camp,  took  it,  and  captured  850 
of  his  men,  more  than  a  third  of  his  whole  force. 
Smuts,  meanwhile,  on  November  6,  had  sent 
Beyers  a  safe  conduct  to  go  to  Steyn.  Defeated 
and  in  flight,  Beyers  determined  to  use  it.  He 
reached  Bloemfontein  in  a  motor-car  with  three 
companions.  There  he  was  arrested  by  a  single 
armed  scout  riding  a  motor-bicycle.  The 
Government  might  have  re^judiated  the  safe 
conduct,  which  Beyers  had  not  attempted  to 
use  till  he  was  a  beaten  and  broken  man.  They 
recognised  it,  and  allowed  Beyers  to  go  to  Ste\'n. 


He  reached  Onze  Rust  on  November  10. 
Steyn  immediately  telegraphed  to  Smuts  a.-*king 
him  to  give  Beyers  a  safe-conduct  to  go  to 
de  Wet.  But  the  affair  between  de  Wet's  men 
and  Cronje's  commando  had  taken  place 
meanwhile.  On  November  9  de  Wet  himself 
had  entered  Winburg,  one  of  the  largest  towns 
in  the  Free  State,  and  had  behaved  with 
brutal  ferocity  to  the  Maj'or  and  other  leading 
inhabitants.  De  Wet  had  had  ample  time  to 
go  to  Onze  Rust  if  he  had  desired  peace.  The 
patience  of  the  Government  was  exhausted. 
Smuts  refused  to  give  Beyers  another  safe- 
conduct. 

Botha  now  took  the  field  agamst  de  \\'et. 
On  November  12  he  met  his  main  force  at  Mush- 
room Valley.  The  result  of  the  engagement  was 
the  complete  defeat  and  rout  of  the  rebel  forces. 
The  Mayor  of  Winburg  and  a  Senator  of  the 
South  African  Parliament,  who  had  both  been 
taken  prisoners  by  de  Wet,  were  rescued.  De 
Wet  himself  escaped,  but  liis  power  was  broken. 
Thereupon  he,  like  Beyers,  suddenly  became 
anxious  to  secure  the  mediation  of  Steyn. 
Again    Smtits   refused,    pointing   out   to    Stoyn 


512 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


that  tills  might  be  merely  another  attempt  to 
gain  time,  and  that  great  dissatisfaction  existed 
among  the  loyal  burghers  at  the  leniency  of  the 
Government,  and  telling  him  that   ''  uncondi- 
tional   surrender    on    the    basis    of    the    Prime 
Minister's  conditions  is  necessary,  on  the  under- 
standing that  there  is  at  present  no  intention 
to  apply  capital  punishment  in  the  case  of  the 
leaders."     Meanwhile,   de  Wet  was  a  fugitive 
before    the    Government   forces.     After   Mush- 
room Valley  he  fled  south,  tiuned  east,  and  then 
doubled  due  west ;  till  on  the  night  of  Sunday, 
November     15,    he    reached    the    railway    at 
Virginia.     The  next  day,  after  a  sharp  action, 
he  managed  to  break  through  the  Government 
forces    guarding   the    railway,    and    fled    west- 
wards, closely  pursued  by  Government  mounted 
troops,    aided   by   a   fleet    of   motor-cars.     On 
November  22  he  was  cut  off,  and  agam  turned 
back  east.     With  onK*  25  men  he  attempted 
to  cross  the  Vaal  Ili\'er  into  the  Transvaal,  but 
was   driven   back   from   the   river.     A   second 
attempt    was    more    sviccessful.     But   realising 
at  last  that  all  was  lost,  lie  then' turned  straight 
west,  evidently  hoping  to  be  able  to  make  the 
German  border.     It  wa«  no  use.     The  motor- 
ears  that  were  in  pursuit  were  too  swift  for  his 
tired  horses.     On  December  1,  at  Waterburg, 
110  miles  due  west  of  Mafeking,  his  pursuers, 
having  surrounded   hiiu   while   he   slept,   com- 
pelled him  to  surrender,  with  the  small  remnant 
of  men  that  still  clmig  to  him.     The  officer  to 
\\hom  he  gave  himself  up  was  Colonel  Brits, 
Mho  had  dealt  so  successfully  with  INIaritz  six 
weeks  before. 

Beyers,  since  he  had  left  Steyn's  fanu,  had 
been  vainly  trying  to  join  hands  with  de  Wet. 
It  says  much  for  the  fairness  of  the  Govern- 
ment that,  after  he  was  refused  a  second  safe- 
conduct  by  Smuts  on  No\- ember  10,  he  was 
allowed  to  make  good  his  escape.  Botha  and 
Smuts  might  have  drawn  a  cordon  round  Onze 
Rust,  through  which  Beyers  could  never  liave 
broken.  But  they  had  recognised  his  safe- 
conduct,   out-of-date   thovigh   it   Mas,   and   the 


spirit  of  tliat  recognition  required  tliat  hts 
should  be  unmol&sted  if  he  chose  to  leave  the 
shelter  of  Steyn's  roof.  So  much  law,  in  fact, 
was  given  him  that  he  got  clear  away,  and  was 
not  heard  of  for  some  days.  Then  he  reappeared 
with  a  handful  of  men  in  the  Free  State. 
Reports  about  his  being  at  various  jilaces  kept 
coming  in.  On  December  7  he  Mas  engaged, 
and  again  defeated,  about  15  miles  south  of 
Botha^•ille.  The  pursuit  pressed  him  on  to  the 
Vaal  River — then  running  high  and  SMoUen 
Mith  flood  Maters  from  the  moiintains.  Beyers 
tried  to  SM-im  his  horse  across,  while  the  bullets 
swept  the  water  all  round  liim.  No  bullet 
touched  him,  but  the  stream  was  too  SMift  for 
him.  Hampered  by  a  heavy  coat,  he  Mas 
carried  aMay  and  drowned.  Tmo  daj's  later  his 
body  was  recovered  from  the  river. 

The   capture   of   de   Wet  and   the   death   of 
Beyers    really    ended    the    rebelHon,     though 
scattered  parties  in  the  Free  State  held  out  for 
some  time,   and  were  only  gradually  brought 
to  suiTender.     Kemp,  who  operated  throughout 
on  the  extreme  M^estem  border  of  the  Transvaal, 
penetrated  some   May  into  the   north-western 
districts    of    the    Cape.     On    November    7    he 
attacked  Kuruman,  but  was  beaten  off.     The 
Government  forces  in  pursuit  brought  him  to 
action    on    November    16    at    Klein    ^Vitzand, 
about  80  miles  from  Kiu-iunan,  but  Kemp  had 
occupied  a  strong  position  and  compelled  them 
to    retire.     Closely    pursued    by    Government 
troops,    he,    nevertheless,    managed    to    elude 
them,  and  finally  disappeared  westwards  into 
the  Kalahari  Desert  on  Novenaber  25.     About 
two  months  later,  in  company  with  Maritz,  he 
reappeared,    and    invaded    the    north-western 
districts  of  the  Cape.     They  attacked  Upington 
on  January  24,   1915,  but  Mere  repulsed  with 
heavy  loss.     After  desultory  fighting  during  the 
next   feM"   days,   Kemji   suddenly   appeared   at 
Kakamas  Mith  43  officers  and  486  men.     All 
surrendered,  voluntarily  and  without  conditions, 
to    the     Government.       The     South     African 
rebellion  Mas  at  an  end. 


END     OF     VOLUME     THEEE. 


INDEX    TO    VOLUME    III. 


Abbas  Hilmi,  Khedive  of  Egypt, 
288  ;  deposed,  307,  310  ; 
in  Constantinople,  289  ;  in- 
trigues in  Egypt,  291,  307. 

Abdul   Hamid,  63,  293 

Aircraft :  German,  drop  bombs 
on  Warsaw,  330 ;  Taube 
drops  bombs  at  St.  Omer, 
32  ;  wrecked,  32  ;  Taube 
shot  down   by   British,    170 

Akaba,  shelled  by  H.M.S. 
Minerva,  146 

Allenby,  General,  commanding 
Cavalry  Corps,  5  ;  ordered 
to  secure  passage  of  the 
Lys,  37  ;  462 

Allenstein  :  captured  by  Rus- 
sians, 230  ;  Russians  evac- 
uate, 234 

Alsace-Lorraine  :  campaign  in, 
437-440 ;  General  Joffre's 
strategy  in,  405 ;  German 
atrocities  in,  416  ;  position 
at  end  of  August,  1914,  408, 
at  end  of  February,  1915, 
440 

Altkirch,  French  gain  important 
position  near,  438 

Amazon,  H.M.  monitor,  dam- 
aged on  Belgian  coast,  480 

Anglo-Persian  Oil  Company, 
danger  of  damage  by  Turks, 
108 

Anlcy,  Lieut. -Colonel,  at  Le 
Gheir,  458 

Ardahan,  Russians  drive  Turks 
oiit  of,  71 

Ardenne,  General  von,  article 
on  importance  of  Calais  to 
the  Germans  quoted,  167 

Arethusa,  H.M.S.  :  in  Cuxhaven 
raid,  153  ;  in  North  Sea 
action  (January  24,  1915), 
155 

Argonne,  fighting  in  the,  430- 
434 

Armentieres  :  British  occupa- 
tion of,  37  ;  Germans  evac- 
uate, 175  ;  Allied  line  at- 
tacked at,  459 

Armoured  motor  car,  impor- 
tance of,  31 

.\skew.  Corporal  W.  J.,  464 

Aubers,  British  capture,  442 

Auffenbcrg,  General  von,  in 
command  of  2nd  Austrian 
Army,  242,  326,  343 

Augustowo,  battle  of.   238-240 

.Augnstowo,  forest  of,  descrip- 
tion, 204 

Aurora,  H.M.S.,  in  North  Sea 
action  (January  24,  1915), 
155 

Australian  Army,  Ex))cditionary 
Force  arrives  in  Egypt,  299 

Austria,  rumoured  overtures  of 
jjcace,  327 

Austria,  Archdukes  Joseph  Fer- 
dinand of,  in  command  of 
3rd  Austrian  Army,  243,  343 

Austrian  Army,  advance  in 
Calicia,  242 

Austrian  atrocities  in  Serbia, 
394-398 


Austro-German  friction,  327. 
Azizel  Masri,  294,  318 


B 

Badonviller,  lighting  at,  414 

Bagatelle,  Germans  capture,  433 

Baghdad  Railway :  agreement 
between  Great  Britain  and 
Germany,  101  ;  British  op- 
position to,  90 ;  conces- 
sions granted  to  Germany, 
90  ;  negotiations  in  London 
regarding,  99 

Bailleul,  British  enter,  35 

Baker,  General  Valentine,  in 
Russo-Turkish  War  (1877- 
8),  58 

Barrett,  JJeut. -General  Sir 
Arthur,  in  command  of 
operations  at  Basra,  110. 

Bashkola,  Turks  defeated  at,  79 

Basra  :  British  occupation  oi, 
116  ;  description  of  eountiv 
round,  83;  fall  of,  114"; 
histor}'  of,  115 

Battenberg,  Prince  Louis  of, 
resigns  office  of  First  Sea 
Lord,   121 

Bavaria,  Crown  Prince  of,  in 
Flanders,  166,  40(),  42r., 
450 

Bavazid,  Russian  occupation  of, 
■   77 

Beatty,  Vice- Admiral  Sir  David, 
in  Ncrth  Sea  action  (Janu- 
ary 24,  1915),  155 

Becelaere,  bombardment  of,  455 

Beerst  :  Belgian  occupation  of, 
176  ;  captured  by  (Jermans, 
18(i,  443  ;  retaken  by  Allies, 
187 

Belfort,  French  driven  back  to, 
408 

Belgian  Government  transferred 
to  Havre,  7 

Belgians,  King  of  the,  in  the 
trenches,    185 

Belgrade  :  Austrian  wounded 
in,  392  ;  bombardment  of, 
398-400  ;  operations  at, 
387  ;  Serbians  evacuate, 
383  ;  Serbians  recapture, 
389 

Beresford,  Lord  Charles,  on 
submarine  warfare,  152 

Bernstorff,  Count,  on  conditions 
of  ])eace,  16 

Beyers,  General,  484  ;  chai- 
aciter  of,  494 ;  Comman- 
dant -  General  in  South 
Africa,  495  ;  defeated,  511  ; 
drowned,  512;  given  safe 
conduct  to  Steyn,  511; 
in  collusion  with  the  Ger- 
mans, 496  ;  in  rebellion,  503  ; 
refusal  to  meet  Steyn,  507  ; 
resignation  of,  501 

Bidon,  General,  5,   190.  457 

Bikanir  Came!  Coipi  at  Bir-eu- 
Nuss,  319 

Bir-en-Nuss,  action  at,  319 

Birniinghaw,  H.M.S.,  in  Noitli 
Sea  action  (Januuiy  24, 
1915),   155 

513 


Bixschoote  -   Langemarek  -   St. 
Julien  -  Zonnebekc  line,   1st 
Corps  on  the,  457 
"  Black    Country,"    description 
of,  19 

Blamont,  German  occupation  of, 
413 

Blonie  :  action  at,  333  ;  Rus- 
sian line  at,  216 

Blucher,  German  cruiser,  in 
North  Sea  action  (January 
24,  1915),  157  ;   sunk,  158 

Bobr,  River,  Russian  line  at,  207 

Bobrinsky,  General  Count,  ap- 
pointed Governor- General 
of   Galicia,    256,   343 

Bochnia,   Russians  capture,  356 

Bohm-Ermolli,   General,   343 

Bompard,  M.,  French  Am- 
bassador, leaves  Constanti- 
no])le,   52 

Bonneau,  General,  403 

Botha.  General  Louis,  484 ; 
appeals  to  Ex-President 
Steyn,  506,  507  ;  first  Union 
Prime  Minister,  488;  on 
treachery  of  General  Maritz, 
506  ;  relations  with  General 
Hertzog,  488  ;  takes  com- 
mand of  South  African 
forces,  503 

Botszonce,  fighting  around,  252 

Boveerig,  (Jeneral.  in  command 
of  Austrian  Army  based  on 
Przemysl,  272 

Boyen,  fortress  of,  207 

Bo3-ovitch,  General,  367  :  ad- 
vance on  the  Frushkagora 
Mountain,  368 

Breslau,  German  cruiser,  bought 
by  the  Turkish  Govern- 
ment, 44 ;  damaged  in 
Black  Sea,  76 ;  engaged 
in  Black  Sea,  147 

Brest-Litovsk,  fortress  of,  21() 

Bristol,  H.M.S.,  in  Falkland 
Islands  action,  136 

British  Army  :  7th  Division, 
constitution  of,    168,    169 

British  Navy  :  operations  on 
Belgian  coast,  154,  189, 
443,  469,  476 

Brits,  Colonel  ;  de  Wet  sur- 
renders to,  512  ;  instructed 
to  arrest  General  Maritz, 
502 

Brodv,  Russian  occupation  of, 
249 

Browne,  Lieut.-Coloncl  Wogan, 
111 

Brownlow,  Major,  apjiointed 
Military  Governor  at  Basra, 
116 

Brugere,  General,   1 

Bruges,  German  occupation  of.  <V 

Brusiloll.  General  Alexis,  248; 
Hanking  movement  at  the 
Ztota  Lipa,  252,  270  ; 
Order  of  St.  George  con- 
ferred on,  256  ;  victory  at 
Rawa-Ruska  and  Grodek, 
266 

Brzezany,  lighting  at,  250 

Bukowina  :  description  of.  2*11  ; 
Russian  occupation  of,   357 

Bulliu,  Major-Gcncral,  463 


51 


THE     TIMKS    HISTOIIY     OF     THE    WAR. 


Bulwark,  H.M.S..  blown  up  at 
Shecrnoss,  149  ;  inquiry  on 
loss  of,  151. 

Butlor,  Lieut. -Colonel,  at  Li' 
Gheir,  4oS 

Bynij,  Major-Oeneral  the  Hon. 
Julian,  commanding  3r(l 
Cavalry  Division,  2,  34, 
444  ;  at  Zonnebeke,  457  ; 
diary  quoted,  170 ;  enters 
Ypres,    5 

Bzura,  River,  Russian  line  at, 
207  ;  Germans  eros.s  the. 
351,  355 ;  Russians  fall 
back  on  line  of  the,  350 


c 

Camp  des  Rf^miins,  427;  des- 
troyed, 4  28 

Canopus,  H.M.S.,  absent  from 
action  off  Chilean  coast. 
130  ;  in  action  at  Falkland 
Islands,  136 

Capper.  Major-(}cneral,  in  com- 
mand of  7th  Infantry  Divi- 
sion, 34,  1(J8  ;  at  the  Lvs. 
37 

Catnarvon,  H.M.S.,  in  Falkland 
Islands  action,  136 

Carpathians  :  description  of 
passes,  213  ;  fighting  in 
the,  357  ;  strategical  im- 
portance of,  212 

Castelli,  General  de,  404 

Castelnau,  General  de,  1,  174, 
403 

Caucasus  ;  campaign  in  the, 
67-80  ;  description  of 
Russo-Turkish   frontier,    68 

Chaldea.  British  invasion  of. 
81-120 

Champagne  district,  fighting  in 
the,  434 

Chcetham,  Sir  Milne,  Acting 
High  Commissioner  in 
Egypt,  308,  316 

Chilean  coast,  action  off,  129- 
134 

Chope,  Captain,  at  Bir-en-Nuss, 
319 

Churchill.  Rt.  Hon.  Winston, 
on  North  Sea  action  (Janu- 
ary 24,  1915),  159 

Cirey,  Germans  occu{)y,  413 

Cocos- Keeling  Islands,  action 
at,  126 

Col  du  Chipatte,  fighting  at,  413 

Conneau,  General,  2,  5,  174, 
449 

Cornwall,  H.M.S.,  in  Falkland 
Islands  action,  130 

Courtrai,  German  reinforce- 
ments reach.  443 

Cox,  Colonel  Sir  Percy,  British 
Resident  in  the  Persian 
Gulf,   111 

Cracow:  description  of,  211  ; 
German  defensive  position 
at,  349  ;  Russian  advance 
on,  270,  356  ;  strategical 
importance  of,  212,  215, 
216,  218 

Cradock,  Rear- Admiral  Sir 
Christopher,  129  ;  death, 
133 

Cromer,  Lord  :  in  Egypt,  282  ; 
relations  with  Abbas  Hilmi, 
288 

Cronje,  Commandant,  engages 
de  Wet  near  Kroonstad, 
510 

Cuxhaven,  raid  on  by  British 
sea])lanes,   153 

Czernowitz.  Russian  occupation 
of,  357 


D 

Daniell,  Major,  at  Le  Pilly,  449 

Dank!,  General,  in  command  of 
1st  Austrian  Army,  242, 
245  ;  at  Rawa-Ruska,  262 

Da  re  he.  Colonel,  defender  of 
Longwy,  430 

Dardanelles  :  closetl.  51  ;  first 
bombardment  (Novembers, 
1914),  147 

Delamain,  Brig.-General  W.  S., 
in  command  of  Poona  Bri- 
gade in  the  Persian  Gulf, 
107  ;  at  Fao,  108 

de  la  Rev,  General,  addresses 
meeting  at  Treurfontein, 
499  ;  killed,  484,  501 

Dtrfjli iKjcr,  German  cruiser,  in 
North  Sea  action  (Januarj' 
24,  1915),  157 

d'Esperev,  General  Franchet, 
434  ' 

Detch,   Serbians  capture,   368 

Dewa,  Admiral  Baron,  com- 
manding Japanese  First 
Fleet.  121 

de  Wet,  General  Christian,  484  ; 
character  of,  495;  in  re- 
be  lion,  503  ;  speech  at 
Pretoria  quoted,  491 ;  sur- 
renders, 512 

Dixmude  :  bombardment  of. 
456,  473-478  ;  deseri])tion 
of  country  round,  176  ; 
German  attacks  on,  185, 
repulsed,  191-195 

Djavid  Bev,  49,  63 

Djemal  Pa'sha,  47,  49,  63 

Djivkovitch,  (General,  399 

Dniitrieff,  General  Radko,  252, 
344  ;  distinguished  services 
of,  266 

Dniester,  River :  bridges  on 
destroyed  by  Austrians, 
252  ;  Russians  cross  the, 
253 

Dobbie,  ,  Brig.-General  W.  H., 
110 

Dobranovtsi,  Serbians  capture. 
368 

Dombasle,  German  occupation 
of,  419 

Donetz,  Russian  guardship.  sunk 
in  Odessa  harbour,  52 

Dresden.  German  cruiser,  escape 
in  Falkland  Islands  action, 
143  ;  in  action  oS  Chilean 
coast,  130  ;  sinks  two  ves- 
sels, 134 

Drina,  River ;  Austrians  cross 
the,  368,  374 ;  description 
of,   362 

Dubail,  General,  at  Nancy,  403 

Dubois,  General,  403 

Duke  of  Edinburgh,  H.M.S.,  in 
Red  Sea,  145,  318 

d'Urbal.  General,  1,  5,  12,  183, 
185,  446 

Dwarf,  H.JLS.,  German  attempt 
to  blow  up,  145 

E 

East  Coast  raids,  early,  153 
Egypt :  British  occupation  of, 
281-284  ;  British  Protecto- 
rate proclaimed.  310  ;  col- 
ton  industry,  effect  of  war 
on,  287.  296  :  Dentsch- 
Orient  Bank.  291,  292  ; 
economic  measures  after 
outbreak  of  war,  296,  298  ; 
financial  conditions.  287  ; 
German  intrigues  in,  292  ; 
Hisb.  el  Watani  (Patriotic 
Party),  291-293  ;  martial 
law  proclaimed,  304  ;   mea- 


sures  taken   again U   enemy 
subjects  and  shipjdns,  284- 
286.    300.    302-3U4  ;    Minis- 
try,    new,     313;     .Ministry, 
resignation    of,     313  ;    Ser- 
vants of  the  Kaaba  (Secret 
Society),    292  ;    Turkish   in- 
trigues   in.    283,    292-295  ; 
Turkish  suzerainty   in,    282 
Egyj)t,  Khedive  of.  Abbas  Hilmi. 
288 ;      in      Constantino))!e, 
289  ;    intrigues    in     Effypt. 
291,  307  ;  depo.sed,  307^  310 
Egypt,    Sultan   of.    Prince    Hus- 
sein   Kamil.    created,    308, 
312,  314-316 
El  Arish,  occupied  by  Turks,  319 
Emden.     German    cruiser,     des- 
troyed by  H.M.A.S.  Sydneif 
123-129  ■ 
Ennetieres,  attack  described,  38 
Enver  Pasha,  45,  49,  60,  70,  294 
Erbeviller,  fighting  at,  422 
Espiejle,    H.M.S.,    guarding    oil 
refinery    at    Abadan,     108  ; 
in  the  Karun  River,  107 
Espinasse,  General.  404 
Essen,  French  enter,  186 
Evatajji,    Russian    flagship,    fires 

on  the  Goeben,  147 
Ewarts,  General,  246,  267 

F 

Falkenhayn,  General  von,  ap- 
pointed Chief  of  the  General 
Staff,  162 ;  strategy  of, 
162-166 

Falkland  Islands,  British  victory 
at,  134-143 

Fao,  seized  by  British,  108 

Feilding,  Lady  Dorothie,  189 

Fisher  of  Kilverstone,  Lord, 
appointed  First  Sea  Lord, 
121 

Foch,  General,  403,  418,  434,  452 

Formidable,  H.M.S.,  torpedoed, 
151 

France,  Eastern,  distribution  of 
armies  in,  403 

Fran(,'ois,  General  von,  retires 
from  Insterburg.  226 

Prankeuau,  action  at.  230 

French,  Field-Marshal  Sir  John, 
174,  190,  445,  450,  451  ; 
at  Ypres,  445  ;  meets 
General  Joffre  in  Flanders, 
456 

French  marines  in  battle  of 
Yser,  199 

Frushkagora  Mountain,  Serbian 
advance  on,  368 

Fry,  Major-General  C.  J.,  110 

Fuad,  Dr.  Ahmed.  292 

Furnes,  Belgian  Staff  leave,  472 

G 

Galicia :  Austrian  advance  in, 
343  ;  Austrian  plan  of 
campaign  in.  242  ;  Austrian 
reinforcements  in,  257  ; 
frontier  railway  system, 
241  ;  retirement  of  1st 
Austrian  Army,  258,  259  ; 
strategical  position  of  oil- 
fields, 210 

Garibaldian  contingent  in  the 
Argonne,  433 

George  V..  King  :  decorates 
William  Pillar  for  services 
rendered  to  crew  of  H.M.S. 
Formidable.  152  ;  message 
to  Sultan  of  Egypt,  314 ; 
message  to  Sultan  of  Tur- 
key, 49 

Georijio'i.  S..S.,  sunk  by  Russian 
torpedo  boat.s,  76 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


515 


(jierbeviller,  fighting  at,  414 ; 
German  atrocities  in,  416 

German  Army  :  cavalry,  in- 
feriority of,  18 

(jerman  influence  in  Turkey,  42 

(lerman  plan  of  campaign  in 
Poland,  216,  217 

German  South-West  Africa, 
proposed  invasion  of,  49(5 

German  West  Africa,  British 
and  French  landing  forces, 
145 

<Termany  :  strategical  railways 
on  Russian  frontier,  202 

Germany,  Crown  Prince  of,  at 
Longwy,  430 

Ghent :  British  evacuate,  170  ; 
German  occupation  of,  6, 
170 

Giers,  M.  de,  Russian  Ambassa- 
dor, leaves  Constantinople, 
52 

Givenchy-Neuve  Chapelle-Fau- 
quissart  line,  British  retire 
to,  459 

Glasgow.  H.M.S.,  escape  in 
Chilean  coast  action,  133  ; 
in  action  at  Falkland  Is- 
lands, 136 

Glossop,  Captain  John  C.  T., 
official  dispatch  on  destruc- 
tion of  Emden,  127-129 

Gneisenau,  German  cruiser,  in 
action  off  Chilean  coast, 
130 ;  sunk  at  Falkland 
Islands,  140 

Goeben,  German  cruiser  bom- 
bards Sebastopol,  147  ; 
bought  by  the  Turkish 
Government,  44  ;  damaged 
by  Evstafp,  147  ;  damaged 
by  mine,  76 

Goltz,  General  von  der,  enters 
Ostend,  9 

Good  Hope,  H.M.S.,  sunk  in 
action  off  the  Chilean  coast, 
129 

Gorst,  Sir  Eldon,  in  Egypt,  283, 
289 

Gough,  General,  457  ;  in  com- 
mand 2nd  Cavalry  Division, 
15  ;    at  Mont-des-Ca»K,  33 

Graham,  Sir  R.,  work  in  Egypt, 
298.  304 

Grand  Couronne  of  Nancy,  413 

Great  Britain  takes  over  Turkish 
battleship  Sultan  Osman.  43 

Greece,  relations  with  Turkey 
before  the  war,  41 

Grobler,  Piet,  492 

Grodek  line  :  Austrian  strength 
on,  262  ;    battle  of,  261-267 

Grosetti,  General,  197  ;  at  Nieu- 
port,  463,  465 

Guchevo,  fighting  at.  370 

(Jumbinnen,  battle  of,  226 


H 

Haig.      General      Sir      Douglas, 

450,  451,  456  ;   biogra])hi('al, 

445,  44()  ;    at  St.   Oiner,  38, 

190:      at    Ypre.s     with     1st 

Corp.s,  442 
Halicz,      bridge     destroyed     by 

Austrians,  252 
Hamburg- Atncrika  Company,  in- 

tere.sfs     in      Per.sian      Gulf, 

9()'  99 
Hamidiih,        Turkish        cruiser, 

damaged  in   Black  Sea,   76 
Hamilton,    General   Sir   Hubert, 

killed,  25 
Hardinge    of    Penshurst.    Lord, 

visits  Persian  Gulf,  119 
Hartmannsweilerkopf,      fighting 

at.  439 


Hassan  ed  Din  Pasha,  76 

Hausen,  General  von,  434 

Hazebrouck,  German  occupa- 
tion of,  4 

Herlies,  captured  by  the  British, 
26 

Heniies,  H.M.S.,  sunk  by  German 
submarine,  148 

Hertzog,  General,  484 ;  char- 
acter of,  486 ;  expelled 
from  the  Botha  Ministry, 
489  ;  influence  in  Orange 
River  Colony,  485  ;  policy 
of,  489  ;  relations  with 
General  Botha,  488  ;  speech 
at  De  Wildt  quoted,  490 

Hesse,  Prince  Max  of,  death  at 
Mont-des-Cats,    33 

Hewlett,  Flight  Commander,  in 
Cuxhaven  raid,  153 

Hilmi  Pasha,  60,  62 

Hindenburg,  Field-Marshal  von, 
347,  350  ;  advance  to  the 
Niemen,  204  ;  career,  231- 
233  ;  in  command  in  East 
Prussia,  231  ;  in  command 
of  Austro-German  forces. 
327  ;  strategy  in  East 
Prussia,  233-237  ;  tactics 
at  Warsaw,  329  ;  victory 
at  Tannenberg,  205 

Hishmet  Pasha,  293 

Hofmeyr,  Jan,  in  South  Africa, 
483,  488 

Hoi  brook,  Lieut. -Commander 
Norman  D.,  awarded  the 
V.C,  148 

Hood,  Rear-Admiral,  bombards 
the  Belgian  coast,  154,  189, 
443.  469 

Hotzendorf,  General  Konrad 
von,  326 

Houthulst,  Forest  of,  Germans 
driven  out  of  the,  441  ;  re- 
occupied  by  the  Germans, 
446 

Hunter- Weston,  General,  at  Le 
Gheir,  458 


Indian  Army,  Expeditionary 
Force  arrives  in  Egyi)t,  299 

Indomitable,  H.M.S.,  in  North 
Sea  action  (January  24, 
1915),  155-157 

Inflexible,  H.M.S.,  in  Falkland 
Islands  action,   136 

Insterburg  :  German  retirement 
from,  226  ;  Russian  occu- 
pation of,  228 ;  Russians 
evacuate,   236 

Intrepide,  French  destroyer, 
Rear-Admiral  Hood  hoists 
his    flag    on    the,    480 

Invincible,  H.M.S.,  in  Falkland 
Islands  action,  136 

Iskan  Pasha,  defeated  at  Sari- 
kamish.  71,  73 

Ismail  Hakki,  intrigues  in  Egypt, 
294 

Ivanoff,  General,  246  ;  in  com- 
mand of  besieging  force  at 
Przemysl,  273  ;  Order  of 
St.  George  conferred  on, 
275 

Iwangorod  :  Austro  -  German 
force  defeated  at,  336 ; 
bombardment  of,  334  ;  forts, 
216  ;  Gorman  advance  on, 
329 


Japan,  declaration  of  war 
against    Germany,    121 

Japanese  Navy  at  Tsing-Tau. 
121 


Jarak  :  fighting  at,  366 ;  Ser- 
bians capture,  368 

Jaroslau  :  fighting  around,  344  ; 
Russians  capture,   267.  272 

Jeanniot,  Commandant,  at  Dix- 
mude,  474 ;  at  the  Yser, 
467  ;   killed,  475 

Joffre,  General,  404,  437  ;  di- 
recting operations  on  the 
Yser,  190  ;  meets  Sir  John 
French  in  Flanders,  45(i  ; 
strategy  in  Alsace-Lorraine, 
405 

Julie,  Sceur,  Cross  of  Legion  of 
Honour  conferred  on,  416 


K 

Kaiser,   The  :     at   Nancy,   422 ; 

in  Flanders,   161  ;    visits  to 

Constantinople,  90 
Kniserin      Elizabeth,      Austrian 

cruiser,   lost   at   Tsing-Tau, 

123 
Kakamas,    Maritz    defeated    at, 

503 
Kalisch,     Germans    cross    fron- 
tier at,  325 
Kamimura,     Rear-Admiral,     as- 
sists in  landing  of  troops  at 

Lunkiang,  122 
Kara  Kilissa,  Russians  seize.  76 
Kara-Urgan,     Russian     victory 

at,  75 
Kato,      Admiral,      commanding 

Japanese  Second  Fleet,  121  ; 

concentrates  on  Kiao-Chau 

Bay.  122 
Kemp,  Major,  character  of,  495  ; 

in  rebe'.lion,  5C3;  surrenders 

at  Kakamas,  512 
Kent,      H.M.S.,      in      Falkland 

Islands  action,  136 
Keyera  :       Belgian     occupation 

of,  176  ;    Germans  capture, 

186,  444 
Kiamil  Pasha,  63 
Kielce,  battle  of,  341,  343 
Kitchener,  Lord,  in  Egypt,  282, 

283,  291 
Kock,  Lieut.-Colonel,  refuses  to 

march    on    German    South- 
West  Africa.  500 
Kogge,  Monsieur  Charles  Louis, 

opens  sluices   on   the   Yser, 

471,  476 
Kolubara,  River,  fighting  on  the, 

382 
Kolubara    line,    Serbians    with- 
draw from,  383 
Kolubara-Lyg  line,   Serbian  de- 
fence along,  376 
Konigsberg  :    fortress    of,    213  ; 

threatened  by  Russians,  228 
KOnir/nberg,       (icrman      cruiser, 

shells  H.M.S.  Pegasus,  143; 

destroyed,  144 
Kopjes,  meeting:  of  rebel  leaders 

{October  13,  1914)  at,  505 
Koprukeui,  Russians  eaptur(\  ()9 
Kostaiinik.  Serbians  hold.  370 
Kowcit  :       agreement      Ix-twcen 

(Jreat    Britain    and    Tuikey 

regarding,  99  ;   German  at- 

temjits  to  seize,  92 
Koweit,    Sheikh    of,    refusal    to 

lease  territory  to  Germans. 

92 
Kozieniee,  attack  on,  335 
Kragujevatz,  Serbians  retire  to. 

375 
Krasnostaw.  fighting  at,  258.  261 
Kroonstad-Natal  line,  blown  up 

by  rebels.  510 
Krujiani.  fightiTisj  at.  .370,  373 
Kupinovo.  Scri)inn.s  eai)tiin'.  3li5 


510 


37/2';    TIMES    HlSTOIiY    OF    THE    ]yAli. 


Xupinski  Kut,  Serbians  cross  the 
Save  at,  364 

Kurna  :  advance  on,  117  ;  fall  of, 
118  ;    first  action  at,  117 

Kusmanek,  General,  in  com- 
mand at  Przemysl,  272-274 

Kutno,  Russians  driven  back  at, 
350 


La  Bassec,  description  of  coun- 
try around,  22 

Lambe,  Captain  C.  R.,  148 

Langle  de  Gary,  General,  409,  434 

Lansdowne,  Lord,  on  British 
control  of  the  Persian  Gulf, 
107 

Lawford.  General,  in  command 
of  22nd  Infantry  Brigade, 
457 

Lazarevatz,  Austrian  attack  on, 
377 

Ledeghem,  captured  by  British. 
39,  444 

Le  Gheir,  British  occupation  of, 
441,  448  ;  Germans  re- 
attack,  459 

Leipzig,  German  cruiser,  in 
action  off  the  Chilean  coast, 
130  ;  sinks  three  steamers, 
134 ;  sunk  at  Falkland 
Islands,  140 

Leke,  Belgian  occupation  of,  176 

Lemberg  (Lwow)  :  Austrian  re- 
treat, 253  ;  battle  of,  253- 
257  ;  history  of,  254  ;  posi- 
tion, 211  ;  Russian  occupa- 
tion of,  253  ;  strategical  im- 
portance of,  254 

Le  Filly,  British  capture,  449  ; 
Germans  recapture,  456 

Lerouville,  bombardment  of,  428 

Lille  :  bombardment  of,  28,  29  ; 
fall  of,  28  ;  Germans  in,  2, 
29 

Liman  von  Sanders,  General,  in 
charge  of  German  Military 
Mission  to  Turkey,  51,  57, 
64,  66 

Limpus,  Admiral,  and  British 
Naval  Mission  dismissed  by 
Turkey,  44 

Lion,  H.M.S.,  in  North  Sea  ac- 
tion (January  24,  1915J, 
155-159 

Lodz :  description  of,  207  ; 
fighting  around,  351  ;  Ger- 
man occupation  of,  328, 
352-355  ;  reoccupied  by  the 
Russians,  338 

Lombartzyde,  Allies  evacuate, 
476 ;  Belgian  occupation 
of,  176  ;  lighting  around, 
465  ;    Germans  attack,  443 

Longwy  ;  fall  of,  430  ;  Germans 
cross  the  frontier  at,  408 

Lorraine,  attitude  of  the  people 
in,  411 

Lowestojt,  H.M.S.,  in  North  Sea 
action  (January  24,  1915), 
155 

Loxley,  Captain,  death  on  H.M.S 
Formidable,  151 

Lublin,  Austrian  advance  on, 
246 

Luce,  Captain  John,  report  on 
Chilean  coast  action,  132 

Ludendorff,  General  von,  233 

Luneville  :  German  occupation 
of,  410,  417  ;  Germans  evac- 
uate, 425 

Lwow;  see  Lemberg. 

Lyck,  attack  on.  238 

Lys :  Allied  position  north  of 
the.  442,  448  ;  description  of 
country  around,  30  ;  French 
cavalry  cross  the,  16-19 


M 

Macedonia,  armed  liner,  in  Falk- 
land Islands  action,  136 

Mackensen,  General,  330,  347, 
350 

Magdala,  Wells  of.  Bedouin  oc- 
cupation of,  51 

Mahan,  Admiral,  on  British  con- 
trol of  the  Persian  Gulf,  J  06 

Mahmoud  Shevkct  Pasha,  63  ; 
assassinated,  64 

Mallet,  Sir  Louis,  45,  48,  49  ; 
interview  with  Sultan  of 
Turkey,  50 ;  leaves  Con- 
stantinoj)le,  52  ;  on  Turkish 
neutrality,  46 

Mannekensvere :  Belgian  occu- 
pation of,  176 ;  Germans 
capture,  186 

Manonviller,  fall  of,  410 

Maritz,  General,  491  ;  appointed 
Commandant  of  the  Border, 
496;  at  Schuit  Drift,  499  ; 
character  of,  496  ;  defeated 
at  Kakamas,  503  ;  in  com- 
munication with  the  Ger- 
mans, 502  ;  in  rebellion,  503 ; 
proclamation  quoted,  490 

Martos,  General,  taken  prisoner, 
236 

]\Iasurian  Lakes,  description  of, 
2C5 

Matchko  Kamen,  fighting  at, 
371,  372 

Matchva  district,  Serbian  with- 
drawal from,  374 

]\Iaud'huy,  General  de,  1,  174 

Maxwell,  Lieut. -General  Sir 
John  :  appointed  Comman- 
der-in-Chief of  British 
.  Forces  in  Egypt,  299  ;  is- 
sues proclamations,  305 

Mayer,  Colonel,  in  command  of 
French  force  occupying 
Edea,  145 

Mayes,  Sergeant  Charles,  142 

McMahon,  Sir  Henry,  aj^pointed 
High  Commissioner  in 
Egypt,  309 

Meade,  Captain  the  Hon.  H.,  in 
North  Sea  action  (January 
24,  1915),  157 

Mtdjidieh,  Turkish  cruiser,  en- 
gaged at  Sinope,  76 

Melle,  action  at,  6 

Menin,  British  advance  on,  441, 
444  ;  strategical  importance 
to  the  Germans,  40 

Mersey,  H.M.  monitor,  damaged 
oS  Belgian  coast,  480 

Messudiyeh,  Turkish  battleship, 
torjiedoed  by  British  sub- 
marine B  11,  148 

Meteren,  captured  bv  the  British, 
33 

Meuse  :  fortresses  on  the,  409, 
425  ;  French  cross  at  Lerou- 
ville, 428  ;  Germans  cross  at 
St.  Mihiel,  428 

Meyser,  General,  189,  454 

Mezera  shelled  by  the  British,  117 

Michel,  General,  commanding 
Allies  on  the  Yser,  183,  187 

Middle  East,  German  influence 
in,  88-90 

Midhat  Pasha,  annexations  of 
Gulf  Territory,  88 

Milovatz,  Austrian  occupation 
of,  378 

Minerva,  H.M.S.,  cruiser,  in  the 
Red  Sea,  318  ;  shells  Akaba, 
146 

Mirman,  M.  Leon,  Prefect  of 
Meurtho  et  Moselle,  412 

Mishitch,  General  :  at  Suvobor, 
384  ;  in  command  of  Serbian 
l.st  Armv,  383 


Mitrovitza,   Serbian  disaster  ati 

365 
Mitry,  General  de,  35,  185,  190, 

451,  456 
.Mohamed  Ali,  Prince,  requested 

to  leave  Egypt,  306 
Mohamed  Bey  Farid,  291,  293 
-Molkenrein,  French  take,  439 
Moitke,  General  von,  superseded 

by  General  von  Falkenhayn, 

161 
Moitke,  German  cruiser,  in  North 

Sea    action     (January     24, 

1915),  157 
Monmouth,     H.M.S.,     sunk     in 

action  off  Chilean  coast,  130 
Mont-des-Cats,     description     of, 

19  ;    strategical  importance 

of,  448 
Moore,  Lieut.-Commander  A.  P., 

148 
Morhange,  French  defeat  at,  41)3, 

408 
Morgen,  General  von,  237,  350  ; 

issues  ijroclamation  to  Poles, 

323 
Mors,  Lieutenant  R.  C,  German 

plot  in  Egypt,  295 
Miilhausen  :    French   occupation 

of,  405,   437  ;   German  bru- 
tality in,  438 
Miiller,    Captain    Karl    von,    in 

command  of  the  Emden,  126 
Munro,  Dr.  Hector,  189 
^Muscat,  attacks  on,  120 
Mustafa  Kamil  Pasha,  291 

N 

Nancy  :  bombardment  of,  423  ; 
defence  of,  402,  410  ;  fight 
foi,  417-419,  422  ;  strate- 
gical position  of,  413 

Narew,  River,  Russian  line  at, 
207 

Nazim  Pasha,  assassinated,  63 

Neidenburg,  captured  by  Rus- 
sians, 230 

New  Zealand  Army,  Expedi-- 
tionarj'  Force  arrives  in 
Egypt,  299 

New  Zealand,  H.M.S.,  in  North 
Sea  action  (Januarj-  24, 
1915),  155-157 

Niazi  Bey,  heads  Young  Turk 
movement,  62 

Niemen,  River,  description  of, 
204 ;  German  attempt  lo 
cross,  239 

Nieuport ;  bombardment  of, 
197  ;  British  naval  men  at. 
451  ;  French  at,  463  ;  Ger- 
mans bombard,  466,  468  ; 
history  of,  179  ;  naval  opera- 
tions at,  154 

Niger,  H.M.S.,  sunk  by  German 
submarine,  148 

Nomeny,  German  occupation  of, 
418 

North  Sea,  action  in  (January 
24,  1915),  155-160 

Nottingham,  H.M.S.,  in  North 
Sea  action  (January  24. 
1915),  155 

Novo  Georgievsk  Forts,  216 

Nurnherq,  German  cruiser  :  cuts 
•  Pacific  cable,  134  ;  in  action 
off  Chilean  coast,  130  ;  sunk 
at  Falkland  Islands,  140 


0 

Oder,   River.   German  fortresses 

on  the,  214 
Odessa :     harbour      raided      by 

Turkish  torpedo  boats,  52  ; 

Turkish  raid  on,  304 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


517 


Odin,   H.M.S.,  in   bombardm,ent 

of  Fao,  108 
Opolie-Turobin  line,  fighting  at, 

261 
Oppenheim,  Baron  Max  von,  292 
Osowiec,  German  siege  of,  238 
Ostend  :    Belgian    exodus    from, 

7-9  ;  strategical  importance 

of,  13 
Olranto,     auxiliary     cruiser,     in 

action  off  Chilean  coast,  130 
Oud-Stuyvekenskerke,     fighting 

at,  4B8 


Pannwit/.,  Dr.  von,  Acting  Ger- 
man Agent  in  Egyy)t,  300 

Papeete,  Gorman  squadron  bom- 
bard, 134 

Passchendaele,  fighting  at,  456  ; 
French  occupy,  445  ;  Ger- 
man occujiation  of,  190 

Passenhcim,  Germans  recapture, 
235 

Pavlovitch,  Colonel,  director  of 
Serbian  military  operations, 
383 

Pcchintsi,  Serbians  occupy.  368 

Prtjasus,  H.M.S.,  shelled  by 
Konigshcrq,  143 

Persia,  neutrality  of  violated  by 
Turkey,  79 

Persian  Gulf :  British  interests 
in.  84,  95-98,  101,  105; 
character  and  history  of, 
81-83  ;  first  German  traders 
in,  91.  101  ;  history  of 
British  influence,  102-105  ; 
operations  in,  81-120,  140; 
])earl  fisheries,  94  ;  (Jerman 
interests  in,  95  ;  Turkish 
interests  in  the,  84 

Pervyse,  German  attempt  to 
reach.  472,  478 

Pestitch,  General,  death,  236 

Pilkem.  Germans  penetrate  line 
at.  462 

Pillar,  William,  deccr.ited  for 
services  during  the  Formid- 
ahlr  disaster,  151 

Piotrkow.  fighting  around,  355 

Plateau  of  Amanr-e,  attack  on, 
41!>,  422  ;  description  of 
413,  418 

Plehvc.  General,  246,  267 

Plcschen,  Russians  cross  frontier 
at.  340 

Ploegsteert  ("  Plug  Street  ") 
Wood.  448 

Poelcap])olle.  British  withdrawal 
from.  454  ;  German  occupa- 
tion of,  190 

Poland  :  description  of.  207  ; 
devastation  in.  3.'".9  ;  first 
German  invasion  of,  321- 
S4t;  (ierraan  proclamation, 

324  ;  German  propaganda. 
324;  Russian  proclamation, 

325  ;  second  German  inva- 
sion, 347  ;  situation  at  end 
of  1914,  359;  .strategical 
importance  of.  203 

Poles  :  (Jermans  anticipate  re- 
bellion, 208  ;  Prussian  o|)- 
pression  of,  209 

Polish  feeling  in  regard  to  the 
wai.  20« 

]'oli,><li  loyalty  to  Pvussia.  322 
Polish  Quadrilateral,"  2i() 

Pont-a-Mousson,  Germans  evac- 
uate, 425 

Port  Stanley,  Admiral  Sturdec's 
fleet  atl  135    •*. 

Portuqnl,  French  vessel,  dam- 
aged in  Odessa  harbour.  52 

Potiorek.  General,  363,  375  ; 
strategy  at  Suvobor,  384 


Princess  Royal,  H.M.S.,  in  North 
Sea  action  (January  24, 
1915),  155-157 

Progar,  Serbians  capture,  365 

Pruefer.  Dr.,  German  agent  in 
Egypt,  292 

Prussia,  East :  description  of. 
.  205  ;  first  invasion  of,  223- 
240  ;    panic  in,  230 

Przemysl  :  fall  of,  275  ;  fighting 
around,  344  ;  history  of, 
272  ;  investment  of,  267, 
272 ;  strategical  import- 
ance of,  215 

Pulteney,  General,  in  command 
3rd  Army  Corps,  5,  449  ; 
at  Radinghem,  441 

Putnik.  General,  361.  363,  374, 
377  ;  strategy  at  Matchko 
Kamen,  371 


R 

Radinghem,      British      capture. 

441  ;  British  reverse  at.  456 
Radom.   Russian  occupation  of, 

340 

Ramscappelle,  bombardment  of, 
480 

Ravnje-Tolich  line,  fighting  on 
the,  369,  373 

Rawa,  River,  Russian  line  at, 
207 

Rawa-Ruska,  battle  of,  263-267 

Rawlinson,  Geneial  Sir  Henry, 
in  command  of  4th  Army 
Corps,  2,  170,  174,  185; 
advances  on  Ypres.  5,  11  ; 
decides  not  to  attack  Menin. 
39  ;  ordered  to  the  line  of 
the  Lys,  38-40 

Red  Sea,  operations  in  the,  145, 
318 

Reims,  battle  of,  430 

Remereville,  fighting  at,  422 

Rennenkampf,  (Jeneral,  225  ;  re- 
tires beyond  the  Niemen. 
237  ;  retreat  from  East 
Prussia,  236  ;  tactics  at 
Gumbinnen,  226  ;  threatens 
Konigsberg,  228 

Reymond,  Senator  (French  avia- 
tor), death  at  Nancy,  404 

Richthofen.  Baron,  293 

Rolleghemcappelle,  captured  by 
British,  39,  444 

Ronarc'h,  Rear- Admiral,  170, 
467.  471  ;  at  Dixmude,  183 
185,  473  ;  biographical,  182  : 
in  command  of  French 
Marines  at  battle  of  the 
Yser.  176 

Roulers,  British  occupy,  34  ; 
eye- witness's  story  of  fight- 
ing around,  38  ;  7th  Division 
march  on,  170  ;  French  ad- 
vance to,  441  ;  French  take. 

442  ;  Germans  capture,  18(>. 
444 

Ruchdi  Pasha.  Hussein,  Pre- 
mier of  Egy|)t,  313 

Russia  :  popularity  of  the  wiw. 
219,  244;  prohibition  ot 
drink,  222.  277 

Russia,  (hand  Duke  Nicholas  of. 
245  ;  issues  ])roclanuvtion  to 
inhabitants  of  Galicia,  279  ; 
Order  of  St.  George  coii- 
feri-cd  on,  275  ;  proclama- 
tion to  Poles,  325 

Russian  Army  :  beha\iour  of 
troops  in  the  field.  277-280  ; 
defective  equipment.  201  ; 
mobilisation,  218  ;  Siberian 
Corps  at  Warsaw,  331,  333  ; 
91st  Siberian  Corps,    Order 


of  St.  George  conferred  on, 
333  ;  transport,  efficiency 
of  road,  242  ;  want  of  strate- 
gic railways,  202 

Russian  offensive,  at  Lublin, 
257  ;  on  the  Galician  fron- 
tier, 249 

Russian  strategy  in  East  Prussia, 
223 

Russo-Prussian  frontier,  224  ; 
description  of,  203-210 

Ruszky,  Genera',  242.  339.  347  ; 
at  battle  of  Augustowo,  238  ; 
in  command  of  Russian 
armies  on  Galician  frontier, 
248  ;  Order  of  St.  George 
conferred  on,  256  ;  takes 
command  of  Russians  on 
the  Niemen,  237 


s 

Sahain,  action  at,  112 

Sahil,  battle  of,  112 

Said  Halim,  Prince,  41.  64 

St.  Die,  Germans  occupy,  413 

St.  Georges,  Germans  cross 
Yser  at.  466 

St.  Mihiel.  43S  ;  Germans  cross 
the  Meuse  at,  428  ;  German 
occupation  of,  427,  428 

Ste.  Genevieve,  bombardment 
of,  418 

Sambor,  Russians  capture,  267 

Samsonoff.  General,  225  ;  death. 
236 ;  operations  along  the 
Masurian  Lakes.  228 

San,  battle  on  the,  356  ;  Rus- 
sians cross  the,  268,  344 

Sandomierz,  Russian  occupation 
of,  269 

Saniyeh,  Turks  checked  at,  110 

Sarikamish,  Russian  victory  at, 
71,  73,  74 

Sarrail,  General,  404,  4.30.  433. 
435 

Save,  River,  Austrian  monitor 
sunk  by  Serbians,  374  ; 
Austrian  retreat  across.  388  ; 
Serbians  cross,  364;  Serbians 
retire  to,  366 

Saxe-Meiningen,  (Jrand  Duke  of. 
in  Lodz.  339 

Saxony,  King  of,  at  Waisaw.  334 

Scharnhorsl.  German  cruiser,  in 
action  off  the  Chilean  coast, 
130  ;  sunk  in  the  Falkland 
Islands  action,  140 

Schoore.  Belgian  occupation  of, 
176 

Schroder,  Admiral  von,   197 

Schuit  Drift  :  fighting  between 
Germans  and  Dutch  at.  499; 
South  African  rebels  defeat- 
ed at.  503 

Sebastopol.  bombarded  by  the 
Goebeii,  147 

Serai,  Turks  defeated  at,  79 

Serbia,  secontl  Austrian  invasion 
of,  368-372  ;  third  Atistrian 
invasion  of,  374-394 

Serbia.  King  Peter  of.  in  the 
firing  liiu',  384 

Serbian  Army,  shortage  of  am- 
munition, 374 

Serfontein,  Hendrik,  491 

Severn,  H.M.  monitor,  sailors  at 
Nidiport,  451 

Sei/dlitz.  (!ei-ninn  cniiscr.  in 
North  Sea  action  (.lanuarv 
24,  1915).  157 

Sliashinshi.  fighting  at,  36(i 

Shaw,  Brig.-Generul,  in  I'oni- 
mand  of  9th  Infantry  Bri- 
gade. 2(i 

Sheikh  Abdul  Aziz  Sliawisli.  291. 
293 


518 


THE     TIMES    HISTORY     OF     THE     WAH. 


Shiratai,  Japanese  destroyer,  lost 

at  Tsing-Tau,  123 
Shiikri     Bey,     Acting     Ottoman 

High  Commissioner,  294 
Silesia,    strategical    position    of, 

209 
Simon,      Monsieur,      Mayor      of 

Nancy,  412 
Skicrniowice,  (Jermans  at,  32S 
iSlatin  Pasha,  resignation  of.  318 
Smith- Dorrien,        Genei'al        Sir 
Horace :    at    Givenchy,    25  ; 
on    the    line    Aire-Bethune, 
2,     15  ;    ojx'iations    against 
the  (Jernian  right.   19  -2() 
Smuts,  (Jenera',  4S4 
Sochaezew  :       lighting      around, 
355  ;      Germans     at,      328  ; 
Russian  occupation  of.  333 
Sokal,     Russians     repulse     Aus- 

trians  at,  247 
Soldau  :    action    at,    23(1  ;    Ger- 
mans recaptuie.  234 
Souain,  French  capture,  434 
South   Africa  :   after   Boer   War, 
482-485 ;     constitution     of 
Union  of,  487  ;  German  in- 
trigues in,  481 
South    African    Rebellion,    481- 

512 
Southampton,   H.M.S.,   in   North 
Sea     action     (Januarv     24, 
1915),  155 
Spec,  Admiral  von  :    command- 
ing    (Jerman     Far-Eastern 
Squadron.   122  ;    in  Chilean 
coast  action.  130-133 
Stalluponen,  action  at,  22r> 
Steinbach,    French    gain   impor- 
tant position  near.  438 
Stemrich,  Herr,  visits  Koweit,  91 
Stepanovitch,       Field  -  Marshal, 
378  ;  in  command  of  opera- 
tions against  Belgrade.  387 
Steyn,         ex-President,         484  ; 
General   Botha's  appeal   to, 
500,      507  ;       influence      in 
Orange  River  Colony,  480 
Stobnica,  Germans  at,  328 
Strantz.  General  von,  406,  408 
Strazhara,  Austrians  seize,  378 
Strykow,  Russian  success  at,  351 
Sturdee.    Admiral  :    dispatch   on 
Falkland      Islands      action. 
138-142  ;    in    Falkland    Is- 
lands action,  135 
Stiirm,  General,  in  command  of 

Serbian  3id  Army.  380 
Subhi    Bej-  surrenders  Kurna  to 

the  BVitish,  119 
Submarines,    British  :    B    1 1   tor- 
])edoes  the  Mcssudii/ch,  148  ; 
D  1 1  rained,  153 
Submarines,     German  :     U      18 

sunk,  149 
Sudanese,  loyalty  of.  310-318 
Suez  Canal.  British  interests  in, 

281 
Surehin,  Serbians  capture,  308 
Suvobor.     Serbian     victory     at. 

384-387 
Suvobor    Mountains,    Austrians 

capture,  379 
Suwalki.  German  occupation  of. 

237 
Sydney,       H.^NI.A.S..       destroys 

Emden,  123-129 
Syrmia  :  Serbians  evacuate.  308; 
Serbian  invasion  of,  303 


Tabriz  :  in  1909,  79  ;  Russians 
re-enter,  80 ;  Turkish  oc- 
cupation of,  80 

Takachico.  Japanese  cruiser,  lost 
in  Tsing-Tau  operations, 
123 


Talaat  Boy,  49,  03 

Tannenbe.g  •  history  of,  205  ; 
importance  of  battle  of,  205, 
218  ;  Russian  defeat  at, 
233-235 

Tarnogiod.  1st  .\ustiiai)  .Army 
cross  frontier  near,  240 

Tarnopol.  Aiistrian  retreat  at, 
249 

Taverna,  (Jeneral,  404 

Terhand,  fighting  at,  442 

Tervaete,  Gern'ar.s  foiee  the 
Yser  at,  190 

Theodosia.  bombardeil.  52 

Therenet.  (Icncial.  41)3 

Thiaucourt.  (German  reoccupa- 
tion  of,  420 

Thielt,  entered  bv  the  British, 
170 

Thourout,  British  offensive 
against,  451  ;  French 
Marines  in,  170;  French 
retreat  to  Dixniude,  173, 
182 

Tiflis,  08 

Tiger,  H.M.S.,  in  North  Sea 
action  (Januarv  24,  1915), 
155-159 

Tisza,  Count,  212,  213 

Tochinai,  Vice- Admiral.  123 

Tomaszow,  Austrian  defeat  at, 
258 

Toul,  defences  of,  425 

Triumph,  H.M.S..  at  Tsing-Tau, 
123 

Troyon.  bombardment  of.  425- 
427 

Tsing-Ta\i  :  bombardment  of. 
122  ;  surrender  of.  123 

Turkey  :  Battleship  Sultan  ()■■<■ 
man  taken  over  by  Great 
Britain,  43;  capitulations, 
abolition  of  the.  47  ;  tier- 
man  influence  in.  42  ;  rela- 
tions with  Greece  before- 
the  War.  41  ;  Young  Tuik 
revolution  (1908).  59 
Turkey.     Sultan     of,     interview 

with  Sir  Louis  Mallet,  50 
Turkish  Army.  55-56  ;  Artillery 
50  ;  Cavalry,  57  ;  German 
reforms,  55,  04-00;  In- 
fantry, 57  :  mobilization. 
07  ;  strength,  5().  OC. 
Tyrwhitt.  Commodore.  Reginald 
Y.,  in  North  Sea  action 
(January  24,  1915).  155 

u 

Undaunted,  H.M.S.  :  in  Cux- 
haven  raid,  153  ;  in  North 
Sea  action  (Januarv  24, 
1915),  155 

Usk,  H.M.S..  at  Tsinir-Tau.  123 


V 


Austrians       cajjture. 
Serbians      recapture. 


Valievo  : 

375 

380 
Van  Rensburg.  pi-oph"c:es  related, 

499,  500 
Venerable,      H.M.S..     o])erations 

on  Belgian  coast.  470 
Venezelos.   M.,  and  the  Turkish 

Problem,  41 
Verdun  :  defences  of,  425.  435  ; 

(Jerman  advance  on,  400 
Victoria,    occujiation    by    Royal 

^larines.  145 
Violaines,  Germans  capture.  459 
Virginia,    railway    l>ridge    blown 

up  by  rebels.  510 
Vistula,   River  :   Austrians  cross 

the,     249  ;     description    of, 

207  ;  German  fortresses  on, 


214  ;      liussians      cros'^      at 
Sandomierz,  345 
Vosges,   campaign   in   tfie.    437- 
440 

w 

Wahabi  movement  in  .\iabia. 
85,  80,  103 

\V'arn"ton,  captured  bv  British, 
36 

Warsaw  :  attack  on.  32^-334. 
345 ;  l)ombs  dropped  on.  " 
330  ;  fortifications.  329  ; 
(ierman  retreat  at.  333. 
338  ;  Russian  reinforce- 
ments arrive  in.  333  ;  stra- 
tegical importance  of,  207 

Wason,  Commander  Cathcarf  R.. 
in  bombardment  of  Fao,  108 

Watts,  General,  455 

Westende,  Nava!  operations  at. 
1.54 

Westphalia,  strategical  impor- 
tance of,  209 

Wieliczka,  Russians  occupy.  350 

Williams,  (ieneral  Fenwick.  de- 
fence of  Kars  during  Cri- 
mean War,  57 

Wingate,  Sir  Reginald.  Sirdar 
and  Governor- (Jeneral  of 
the  Sudan.  310 

Winn,  Lieut.  Sydnev  Thornhill. 
awarded  the  D.S.O..    148 

Wise.  Lieut.  E.  S..  of  Monitor 
Severn,  at  Nieupoit.  451 

Wisloka,  Austrians  driven  back 
to  line  of,  271 

Woevre  district,  436 

Woirsch,  (ieneral.  defeated  near 
Sandomierz,  209 

Woloczysk.  Russians  cross  the 
frontier  at.  249 

Wonckhaus,  Messrs..  interests 
in  Per.^ian  Gulf.  91-9S 

Wurtemberg,  Duke  of,  408.  434. 
441.  452  ;  attacks  on  Dix- 
mude.  198  :  before  Ypres, 
454.  478;  in  command  of 
Austro-Hungarian  troops. 
348  ;    in  Flanders.  10(i 


Yenikoi,  Russian  victory  at.  75 

Yorck,  (ierman  cruiser,  mined, 
153 

Ypres :  Allied  advance  on.  15- 
40  :  British  and  French 
troo])s  enter,  33  :  descri])- 
tion  of  country  around.  174. 
175  ;  first  phase  of  the 
battle  of.  441-464;  French 
enter.  174 ;  German  occu- 
pation of,  2,  4.  172  ;  posi- 
tion of  Allied  line  October 
20.  1914.  453 :  situation 
October  19,  1914,  445.  447 

Yser:  Allied  line  on  the.  440; 
Belgians  reinforced  on.  4(i4  ; 
description  of  country,  174. 
175  ;  Germans  driven  into 
the.  468  ;  inundation  of  the 
district.  469-480  ;  retreat  of 
French  Marines  from  Ghent 
to,  168 

Yser,  Battle  of,  101-2^0  :  ar- 
rival of  French  reintoi  ce- 
ments, 197  ;  Franco-Belgian 
battle  of,  405-480  ;  German 
tactics,  178 ;  position  of 
Belgian  Armv,  170 


Zhilinskv.  General,  230 
Zonnebcke,  7th  Cavalry  Brigade 

retreat  to,  445 
Ztota  Lipa,  fighting  on  the  lino 

of,  250 


i 


ILLUSTRATIONS    TO    VOLUME    III. 


PORTRAITS. 


PAGE 

Asciiclu'tf,  Colonel  ...      213 

Atamonoff.  Colonel  ...      306 

Austria,  Archduke  Charles 
Francis  Joseph  of 

242,  274,  339 


Earrctt,  Lieut. -General  Sir 

Arthur,  K.C.B. 
Bavaiia,  Prince  Leopold  of 
Belgians,  King  of  the 
Belin,  General 
Beyers.   General  C.   F. 
Bobrinsky,  Count... 
Bonnard,       Monsieur 

Dominiijue     ... 
Botha,  General,  and  family 

482,  493.  495,  506, 
Briscoe,  Brig.-tJeneral 
Brits,  Colonel  Coen 
Brock,       Rear  -  Admiral 

Osmond  de  B. 
Bulfin,  Brig.-General  E.  S. 
Byng,   Major-General    The 

Hon.  Julian  ... 

Capper,  Major-General  Sir 
Thompson 

Chatficld,  Captain  A.  S.  M. 

Cheetham,  Sir  Milne 

Cox,  Colonel  Sir  Percy    ... 

Cradock,  the  late  Rear- 
Admiral  Sir  Christo- 
pher   ... 


104 
162 
455 
410 
486 
261 

428 

507 
311 
505 

154 
456 


163 
153 
304 
108 


129 


Dankl.  General      ...           ...  254 

Delamain,     Brig.  -  General 

W.  S.               107 

De  Wet,  General  Christian 

487,  508,  511 

Be  Wet.  Piet         505 

Djavid  Bey            68 

Djemal  Pasha        ...          ...  54 

DUrbal.  General 164 

Egypt,  Hx-Khedivc  of     ...  314 

Egypt,  Sultan  of  ...          ...  314 

Egyptian  Ministry  at  Out- 
break of  War             ...  297 
Enver  Pasha           63 

Fairar,  Sir  (ieorge             ...  509 

Feilding,  Lady  Dorothie...  195 

Foch,  General        ...           ...  164 

Fournier,  Colonel...           ...  366 


PAGE 

Fowke,  Brig.-General,  C.B.  162 
Francois,  General  von  ...  230 
Fry,  Major-Gcneral  C.  J....      119 

Glossop,      Captain      John 

^  C.  T 124 

Gough,  Major-General     H. 

de  la  P 23 

Halsey,  Captain  Lionel    ...      154 
Harrison,  Lieut. -Colonel  ...      366 
Hertzog,  General  ...  ...      487 

Hewlett,        Flight       Com- 
-     mander  Francis  E.  T., 

R.N 145 

Hindenburg,       Field-Mar- 
shal von  232 

Holbrook.        Lieut.  -  Com- 
mander   Norman    D., 

V.C 147 

Hood,     Rear-Admiral    the 

Hon.  H.  L.    ...  151,477 


./offre.  General 
•lulie,  Sceur 


164 

428 


Kaiser,  The  ...168,205,345 

Kravchenko,  M 250 

Kusmanek,  General  von...  274 

Lawford.       Brig.  -  General 

S.  T.  B.      ^ 457 

Leach,  Private      ...          ...  378 

Lipton,  S'r  Thomas          ...  375 

Ludendortf,  General  von...  232 

McMahon,  Sir  Henry        ...  282 

Mallet,  Sir  Louis 48 

Maritz,  General     486 

Martos,  General  N.  N.      ...  239 

Maud'huy,  General            ...  9 

Maunoury,  (ieneral            ...  410 
Maxwell,      Lieut.  -  General 

Sir  J 309 

Mayes,  Sergeant  Charles  ...  144 

Meyser,  General    ...          ...  471 

Mirman,  Monsieur  Leon  ...  412 

Mishitch.  Field-Marshal  ...  3()7 

Mohamed  Bey  Farid         ...  296 

Morgen,  Lieut. -General  von  238 

Munro.  Dr.  Hector             ...  185 

Pares.  Mr.               213 

Pavlovitch.  Colonel  Givko  3<)5 

519 


PAGE 

Pelly,  Captain  Henry  B 155 

Putnik,  Field-Marsha!      ...      365 


Rennenkampf,  General    ...      228 

Ruggles  -  Brise,       Brig.- 
General  H.  J.  ...     457 

Russia,     Grand     Duke 

Nicholas  of    ...  202,  206 

Russia,  Tsar  of     ...  ...     202 


Said  Halim  Pasha,   Prince 

SamsohofI,       the      late 
General 

Sanders,     General     Liman 
von 

Serbia,  Prince  Paul  of 

Serbia.       Prince       Regent 
Alexander  of... 

Serbian      Staff,       Military 
Attaches  of  Allies     ... 

Shakes])ear,  the  late  Cap- 
tain W.  H.,  CLE.    ... 

Shaw,  Major-General  F.  C. 

Sheikh  Shawish     ... 

SHeikh-ul-Is'am    ... 

Shukri  Pasha 

Slatin  Pasha 

Smuts,  General 

Snagge,  Commander  A.  L. 

Soldatenkow,  Mr 

Souchon,  Admiral 

Spee,  Admiral  Graf  von  ... 

Stepanovitch,       Field- 
Marshal 

Stoddart,     Rear-Admiral 
Archibald  P 

Sturdee,   Vice-Adrairal   Sir 
F.  C.  Doveton 

Stiirm,     General      Youras- 
hitch 


Talaat  Bey 
Tewfik  Pasha 
Turkey,  Crown  Prince  of. 
Turkev,  Sultan  of... 


Washburn,  Mr.  Stanley  ... 

Watts,  Brig.-General  H.  E. 

Wilson.       Lieut.  -  Com- 
mander R.  A. 

Wurtemberg.      Duke      Al- 
brecht  of 


225 

52 
375 

364 

366 

85 
182 
291 

44 

69 
318 
483 
477 
213 

74 
141 

371 

140 

138 

370 

45 
49 
42 
42 

213 

457 

477 
408 


520 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


PAGE 

Abakan  Island,  Anglo- Per- 
sian Oil  Company's 
Refineries       ...  ...      109 

Albert         184 

Argonne  District  ...         431,  435 
Assuan       ...  ...  ...     290 


Bahrein  Island      ...  89,  94 

Basidu,  Kishm  Island      ...        93 
Basra,  Asshav  Creek  83,  116 

Belfort        402 

Belgrade 397 

Bosphorus...  ...  ...        46 

Boulogne    ...  ...  ...        31 

Burnauf,    Railway  Station     403 


Cairo 

Capetown  ... 
Constantino  ;)!(• 
Cracow 


287,  290 

...     504 

43 

...     218 


Danzig 
Dardanelles 
Dixmude    .., 


Fao 


215 

Fort  Chanak       73 
177,  184 


84,  104 


PLACES. 

I' Mi  K 

Gerbcviller              404 

Ghent,  St.  Pierre  Railway 

Station           194 

Gizeh,  Great  Pyramid  of  290 

Halicz         270 

Henjam  Island      ...  ...86,  98 

Heliopolis  Camp  ...  ...     286 

Kiel  Canal 143 

Kishm  Island,  Basidu      ...        93 
Konigsberg  ...  ...      217 

Koweit,  the  Bazaar  at     ...        88 
Kurna         102.  106 


Lemberg 
Lille 
Lodz 
Lyck 


212,  257,  265 

4,  28 

353 

236 


Madras,  Oil  Tanks            ...  127 

Magi],  near  Basra             ...  113 

Masurian  Lake  Country  ...  234 

Matra         91 

Metz,  The  Deutsches  Thor  419 

Muscat       100 


Nieuport 
Nomeny 


177,  184 
...      418 


PAGE 

Oman,  Malcolm  Inlet,  90; 

Elphinstone  Inlet     ...       96 
Ostend        JO.  35.  166 

Pervyse      177.   184 

Place  de  Baccarat  ...      404 

Port  Stanley  ...  ...      13.5 

Pretoria      488,502 

Przemysl    ...  ...  ...      273 

Ramscappelle  177,  184,  474.  478 

St.  Adresse  ...  ...  5 

Shargah      82,92 

Sinai,  Ain  Musa  Well      ...      319 
Soldau  Barracks    ...  ...      227 

Sphinx  and  Pyramids      ...      283 

Tabriz         ...          ...          ...  75 

Tannenberg            ...          ...  235 

Thorn         219 

Tiflis            78 

Valmy         423 

Valparaiso  Harbour  ...  128 

Vitremont  ...  ...  412 

Vryburg      ...  ...  ...  499 

Warsaw      ...  ...  ...      216 


Argonne,    Fighting    in  the 

420-421 

Caucasus,     the    Campaign 

in  the  ...  ...        72 

Champagne,     Fighting     in 

the       420-421 

Coeos  -  Keeling  Islands, 
Sketch  illustrating 
fight  between  H.M.S. 
Sydnei/  a,nd  the  Emden     126 

Coronel,  Action  off  ...      131 

Delta  of  Tigris  and  Eu- 
phrates ...  ...     105 

Eastern  Theatre  of  War  220,  221 
Egypt     and    the    Turkish 

Empire  ...  ...      301 

Euphrates    and    Tigris, 

Delta  of  105 


MAPS    AND    PLANS. 

Falkland    Islands,    Action 

off,  128;  position  of ...      133 
Flanders,    Operations  in 

3,  20,  21,  181 
Franco-German  Frontier        407 


Galician  Campaign  260,  346 


Indian  Ocean 


122 


Kurna,  Plan  of  Actions  at     117 


Persian  Gulf           87 

Poland,  Operations  in      ...  337 
Port      Stanley      Harbour, 

British    Squadron    in  135 


Russo- Prussian  Frontier...     224 


Serbia,  Second  Austrian 
Inva.sion  of,  372 ; 
Third  Austrian  In- 
vasion of        ...         380,  381 

Shatt-al-Arab,      Scene     of 

Actions  on  the  ...      102 

South  Africa  ...  ...      497 

Syrmia,   Expedition  in   ...     368 

Tigris       and       Euphrates, 

Delta  of  105 

Turkish  Empire,  The, 
Distribution  of  Army 
Corps  ...  ...       61 


Warsaw  Front 


329 


Yser,  Battle  of  the  ...      188 

Yser  Inundations...  ...      479 

Ypres,     Battle     of  (First 

Phase)            ...  460,  461 


^ 


BINDING  SECT.       SEP  2  3  1982 


D       The  Times,  London 

501        The  Times  history  of  the 

T5  war 

-•3  S2. 


PLEASE  DO  NOT  REMOVE 
CARDS  OR  SLIPS  FROM  THIS  POCKET 

UNIVERSITY  OF  TORONTO  LIBRARY 


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